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Christianity and Science. 

a Btvit^ of Eectures 

Delivered in New York, in 1874, on 

THE ELY FOUNDATION OF THE UNION 
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 



BY 

ANDREW R PEABODY, D.D., LL.D., 

PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 



NEW YORK: 
ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 

530 Broadway. 

1874. 




^'S.I^^O 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Cambridge : 
Press of John Wilson and Son, 



PREFACE. 



'TPHIS series of Lectures was delivered, by ap- 
pointment, as the third course on the founda- 
tion estabhshed in the Union Theological Seminary 
by Mr. Zebulon Stiles Ely, of New York, in the 
following terms : — 

" The undersigned gives the sum of ten thousand 
dollars to the Union Theological Seminary of the city 
of New York, to found a Lectureship in the same, 
the title of which shall be ' The Elias P. Ely Lec- 
tures ON THE Evidences of Christianity.' 

" The course of Lectures given on this foundation 
is to comprise any topics that serve to establish the 
proposition that Christianity is a religion from God, 
or that it is the perfect and final form of religion for 
man. 

"Among the subjects discussed may be, — 

" The Nature and Need of a Revelation ; 

"The Character and Influence of Christ and his 
Apostles ; 

" The Authenticity and Credibility of the Scriptures, 
Miracles, and Prophecy ; 



iv PREFACE. 

" The Diffusion and Benefits of Christianity ; and 

" The Philosophy of Rehgion in its Relation to the 
Christian System. 

" Upon one or more of such subjects a course of 
ten pubhc Lectures shall be given at least once in 
two or three years. The appointment of the Lec- 
turer is to be by the concurrent action of the direct- 
ors and faculty of said Seminary and the undersigned ; 
and it shall ordinarily be made two years in advance. 

"The interest of the fund is to be devoted to the 
payment of the Lecturers, and the publication of the 
Lectures within a year after the delivery of the same. 
The copyright of the volumes thus published is to be 
vested in the Seminary. 

" In case it should seem more advisable, the direc- 
tors have it at their discretion at times to use the pro- 
ceeds of this fund in providing special courses of 
lectures or instruction, in place of the aforesaid pub- 
lic lectures, for the students of the Seminary, on the 
above-named subjects. 

"Should there at any time be a surplus of the fund, 
the directors are authorized to employ it in the way 
of prizes for dissertations by students of the Seminary, 
or of prizes for essays thereon, open to public com- 
petition. 

" Zebulon Stiles Ely. 

"New York, May 8th, 1865." 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Page 

Preface iii 

Lecture I i 

Science and Christianity defined 2 

Their Sources of Evidence ii 

I. Testimony 12 

Dependence of Science on Testimony 12 

Antiquity of the Gospels 15 

Lecture II 23 

Genuineness of the Gospels 23 

Testimony of Christian Fathers 24 

Of Heretics 35 

Of Enemies ^37 

Rules of Evidence 38 

Authenticity of the Gospels 41 

Their Authors competent Witnesses 41 

The Gospels complementing and interpreting one another . 43 

Lecture III 46 

Internal Evidence of Authenticity 46 

The human Virtues of Christ 47 

His ethical and religious Teachings 54 

His Influence 58 

The Divine Side of his Character 59 

His superhuman Works neither Imposture nor Delusion . 6i 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Pa?e 

Lecture IV. 69 

Mutual Resemblance of the Synoptic Gospels 69 

Their Sameness of Style and Language accounted for . . 74 

Genealogies in Matthew's and Luke's Gospels 78 

Proofs of the Genuineness of John's Gospel 79 

Its Relation to the Synoptic Gospels 85 

Proof of its Antiquity from the History of Gnosticism . . 90 

Lecture V 94 

Miracles an Obstacle to Faith 96 

Pantheistic Objections 96 

Objections from the Sovereignty of Law 96 

Objections from Experience loi 

Need and Use of Miracles 102 

Miracles consonant with the Person and Mission of Christ iii 

Verified by human History 113 

Consistent with the known Methods of the Divine Adminis- 
tration 115 

Lecture VI 118 

Paul's Testimony to Christ's Resurrection the earliest extant 1 18 

Its Source and Validity 119 

Accounts of the Resurrection in the Gospels 121 

The Apostles believed in Christ's Resurrection .... 123 

The Church built upon it 123 

Christ's supposed Reappearance not an Hallucination . . 125 

Not Revival from a Swoon 128 

Uses of the Resurrection 135 

Its Proof grows with Time 141 

Lecture VII 143 

Alleged Deficiencies of Christianity ........ 144 

Its Completeness as to individual Needs 145 

Reasons for its Silence 146 

Its Silence a Proof of its Divinity 153 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. VU 

^ Page 

Its Treatment of Courage 159 

Of Patriotism 160 

Of Friendship .160 

Summary of the Evidence from Testimony 162 

Lecture VIII 165 

II. Experiment 165 

Experiment as a Test of scientific Truth 165 

Claimed as a Test by the Author of Christianity .... 166 

Christianity as a Factor in the Formation of Character . . 168 

As a Source of Energy 175 

As a Support in Trial 180 

As sustaining Hope in Death 183 

Cumulative Argument from Experiment 184 

Lecture IX 187 

Christianity as a renovating Power in human Society . . 187 

What it promises to accomplish 188 

Its rapid Progress in the first Christian Centuries . . . 188 

Influences opposed to it 189 

Its Power over public Sentiment 192 

Its Agency in domestic Life 195 

As regards Slavery 201 

In the Theory and Practice of Government 205 

In the Relief of human Want and Suffering 207 

No other Religion to be compared with it 209 

Lecture X 211 

III. Intuition 211 

Scientific Intuition 211 

Christian Intuition 211 

Intuition defined 213 

Objective Intuition 214 

Subjective Intuition of Christian Ethics 218 

Of Truths appertaining to God i .... 221 



Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Page 

Of Truths appertaining to Christ 222 

Evidential Value of Intuition 224 

Summary 230 

Appendix 233 

I. The Testimony of the Apostles 234 

II. Notes 258 

Index 283 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 



LECTURE I. 

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY DEFINED. — THEIR SOURCES OF 
EVIDENCE. — I. TESTIMONY. — DEPENDENCE OF SCIENCE ON 
TESTIMONY. — ANTIQUITY OF THE GOSPELS. 

nr^HERE is no scriptural type oftener reproduced 
-■- than that of Uzzah, who thought that the ark of 
the Lord would be overturned because the oxen shook 
the cart. Good men, in every age of unfettered thought 
and bold investigation, have been afraid for the truth, 
and afraid of the truth ; unwilling that inquiry and 
research should have free course, lest their results 
should unsettle verities which they yet profess to 
believe divine and eternal, or throw discredit on rec- 
ords which they yet maintain to have been written 
by the inspiration of God. The supposed antagonism 
varies with the spirit of the times ; each and every 
department of learning and liberal study, v/hen in the 
ascendant, having been regarded as of ill omen to 
religious faith and piety. Apprehensions of this 
kind are virtual infidelity. They who entertain them 
have not the firm belief which they profess, and their 
fears do more injury to their cause than can be done 



2 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

by open and bitter enmity. While they mean to 
be loyal, they play the part of Judas, and betray the 
Master whom they love. 

The chief cause of alarm at the present time is 
found by timid Christians in the progress and ten- 
dencies of physical science, as hostile to the authority 
and prestige of the Gospel. That speculations and 
hypotheses which seem opposed to Christianity are 
rife in certain quarters cannot be denied ; but that 
actual and ascertained results of scientific inqiiiry are 
repugnant to aught that God has revealed or Jesus 
Christ has taught, is an assumption as baseless as 
the most absurd of those made in the opposite camp. 
True science and Christianity, if it come from divine 
revelation, cannot by any possibility contradict each 
other : they must coincide as far as they cover the same 
ground ; and it cannot but be that at numerous points 
each should confirm the other. If God is, he must 
have put his signature on his whole creation no less 
than his impress on his manifested or written Word. 
The hieroglyphs of nature must needs correspond 
to the alphabetic writing of revelation, which may 
interpret and supplement, but cannot supersede or 
falsify them. 

But what are the science and the Christianity which 
we may expect to find thus coincident and harmoni- 
ous .'' This question let us answer with due care and 
caution ; for we cannot extend our statement to what- 
ever any sciolist or erratic student of nature may 
choose to term science, nor yet to whatever any 
enthusiast or bigot may claim as Christianity. 



SCIENCE DEFINED. 3 

In the first place, we use science in the Uteral sense 
of the word ; for in this sense only can scientific men 
claim for science the respect and deference of Chris- 
tians. Science is not speculation, but knowledge ; 
not half-truths, but whole truths ; not hypotheses 
which may explain the phenomena of nature, but 
principles which do explain them, and at the same 
time are verified by them. There is, as you well 
know, such science. There are truths appertain- 
ing to .the material universe, of which there is no 
more doubt than of the laws of number and pro- 
portion ; and I have yet to learn that there is any 
repugnancy between science thus defined and Chris- 
tianity. But all is not science that demands to be so 
called. This name is wholly inapplicable to theories 
which include only a portion, and ignore a portion, of 
the facts or phenomena within their scope, to those 
which from their very nature do not admit of proof or 
verification, and to those which are of too recent origin 
to be fully verified. The opinions of scientific men, 
however plausible, nay, however probable, are not 
science, — not, even though they prevail so generally 
as to make dissent from them seem a mark of an illib- 
eral and narrow mind. There have been many such 
opinions thus dominant at former periods, but now 
obsolete, and even objects of ridicule. There have 
been such opinions inconsistent with all received 
religious verities, which have shown open fight, and 
have threatened the very existence of Christianity, 
but which passed into an early and unhonored grave, 
while the religion that they assailed survived un- 
harmed. 



4 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

I do not regard the theory of development or evolu- 
tion, now so generally received among scientific men, 
as necessarily hostile to religious faith ; for there are 
among its most intelligent and able adherents some 
earnest and devout Christian believers. Moreover, 
there are certain aspects in which this theory is pecul- 
iarly attractive on religious grounds. If specific cre- 
ation implies creative wisdom, much more is it implied 
in the endowment of primeval atoms or monads with 
the power of development into all the various and 
unnumbered forms of organized, sentient, intelligent, 
moral, spiritual being ; and we have thus presented to 
us, were it possible, even a more sublime significance 
for the opening words of the Hebrew Scriptures, " In 
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 
Then, too, were we constrained to trace our descent 
from an ancestry of apes or frogs or infusoria, we 
could look with no little complacency on our humble 
origin, from which we might anticipate further develop- 
ment in a posterity of angels and archangels, as far 
superior to ourselves, as we are to the brutes or ani- 
malcules from which we sprang. When we compare 
the alleged beginnings of our race with its present 
condition, there is no limit to what it may become, 
and the brightest visions of prophecy may be tran- 
scended by the history that shall be written. Then, 
again, when we are told that the individual human 
being actually passes through the various forms of 
his lower ancestry, why may he not in his own per- 
son pass successively through all the higher forms of 
which finite being is susceptible 1 But while we have 



CHRISTIANITY DEFINED. 5 

no reason, as the friends of religion, to fear these 
speculations, we are not called upon to make con- 
cessions to them or compromises with them : for 
they are mere hypotheses, are entirely unproved, have 
no claim to be regarded as science, and have not 
as yet complied with the first condition of science ; 
namely, the production of evidence which points con- 
clusively in their direction. From the nature of the 
case, it may be doubted whether they admit of such 
evidence ; and if not, however strong, however well 
grounded may be the bias of the scientific mind in 
their favor, they can have no argumentative value 
against truths or facts which purport to rest on 
direct evidence. 

We now ask. What is the Christianity for which we 
can claim and hope to establish equal validity with 
that of the accredited truths of science ? I answer, 
Simply and solely, the genuineness of the divine 
mission of Jesus Christ ; that is, not of any Christ 
of one's own special shaping or fancy, but of the 
Christ of history, of the Gospels, of the Church, — 
including, of course, the substantial authenticity of 
the evangelic narrative of what Jesus was, said, did, 
and suffered. This narrative has come down to us in 
human language, and is intimately connected, in the 
faith and reverence of Christians, not only with con- 
temporary writings that may illustrate and confirm it, 
but with writings of a much earlier date, which con- 
tain large sections of biography and history, numerous 
details of dates and incidents, and frequent references 
to opinions of their times. But chronology, secular 



6 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

history, ethnology, cosmogony, names and dates, gene- 
alogies, unscientific opinions, are not religion, can have 
formed no part of a divine revelation, and do not need 
to be verified in order to substantiate a revelation. 
"We have this treasure in earthen vessels;" they 
look to me, indeed, like vessels which never could 
have been fashioned on a potter's wheel, had not the 
spirit of God been in the wheel ; but, supposing it were 
not so, our concern is not with the vessels, but with 
their contents. I grant that the vessels — whatever 
of the divine handwork may or may not be discover- 
able in them — are by no means master^orks in their 
human aspect, and, especially, that the Gospels are 
singularly unelaborate. I rejoice that this is the case. 
If the life and teachings of Jesus had been transmit- 
ted to us in such an artistical form as would elude all 
cavil, their very perfectness would prove that these 
records were not written by the peasants and fisher- 
men whose names they bear, but that they were con- 
cocted at some later day when there were in the 
Church learned men and practised writers. That the 
wonderful story is told with precisely such omissions, 
repetitions, inadvertencies, and discrepancies, as igno- 
rant men and unskilled writers could not avoid, is to 
every candid inquirer among the foremost tokens of 
its genuineness, and guarantees for its authenticity. 
It is Christianity thus defined and limited — the 
Christianity contained in, identical with, the historical 
Christ, and this alone — that I shall, in the present 
course of lectures, attempt to verify as pre-eminently 
worthy of belief and acceptance. 



DOGMAS NOT DISCUSSED. 7 

Before I go farther, permit me to state explicitly 
what I do not intend to do, and to give my reasons 
for thus limiting the discussion. 

I shall omit, as far as possible, all reference to the 
dogmatic contents of the Christian revelation. I 
shall exclude them from consideration, not because 
I occupy with regard to them a different position 
from those by whose invitation I am here ; for the 
same catholic spirit which gave the invitation would, 
I am sure, extend itself to the expression — were it 
pertinent — of any opinions of mine that diverge from 
theirs. But, while I do not deem the differences of 
belief among Christians unimportant, all questions of 
interpretation are justly thrown into the background 
in comparison with the fundamental question. Have 
we a record of revelation that needs and craves to be 
interpreted .'* If we have no such record, then we are 
left, in the battle of life and in the chances of the un- 
known future, to stand or fall, to sink or swim, as we 
may : we owe no allegiance ; we can look for no help 
or quarter ; our own right arm must work out our 
salvation, whatever that salvation be ; our only alter- 
native is defiance or despair. But if from the parted 
heavens a voice from on high has broken the eternal 
silence ; if " the mighty God, even Jehovah, hath 
spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the 
sun unto the going down thereof," — then are we no 
longer orphans, abandoned to our miserable self- 
help ; the everlasting arms are beneath and around 
us ; there is room for faith, submission, religion ; 
the union of the human spirit with the divine, 



8 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

before inconceivable, becomes possible. In fine, 
the very dispositions of mind and heart implied in 
accepting a revelation — the abnegation of all self- 
dependence, and the felt need of redemption and sal- 
vation from God alone — are precisely those which 
the contents of the Christian revelation demand and 
cherish. These are the two poles of the religious life, 
and those who are within the sphere of their attraction 
must of necessity differ so much less from one another 
than from their unsphered brethren that their very 
differences are unity. I want, then, in the discussion 
before us, to omit these differences on the same prin- 
ciple on which the mathematician, in working out the 
equation of some great cosmical law, drops remainders 
and eliminates factors which would be of essential 
import in a problem of more limited scope. 

In the next place, I shall take no note of specific 
theories of inspiration. The kind and degree of 
inspiration that may be claimed for the Bible or for 
portions of it is a question for Christians among 
themselves, not between Christians and unbelievers ; 
and it is at best a matter of secondary moment. The 
prime, all-important question is that of authority, 
trustworthiness, infallibleness. Have we a record of 
divine truth which cannot mislead us } To this in- 
quiry we have an affirmative answer when we have 
established the genuineness of the Gospels ; for, first, 
it is impossible that, if the Author of our bein'g has 
revealed the way of salvation, he should have confined 
the knowledge of that way to the contemporaries of 
Christ, and left all coming generations to records 



JUDAISM NOT UNDER QUESTION. g 

which cannot clairfnheir confidence ; and, secondly, 
if the gospel narratives are genuine and true, there 
must have been in the apostolic circle, whence the 
Gospels emanated, a fulfilment of the promise, " The 
Holy Spirit shall teach you all things, and bring all 
•things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said 
unto you." The Bible, from Genesis to the Apoca- 
lypse, is all along ablaze with light never kindled in 
our lower sphere. But it is the best, I would even 
say the only, evidence for its own inspiration. God's 
Spirit in the soul of man bears unanswerable testimony 
to his Spirit in the written Word. Inspiration is there- 
fore to be discerned and felt, rather than proved ad 
extra; while genuineness and authenticity may be 
proved in accordance with the established laws of 
evidence. 

One more omission. I shall say little or nothing of 
Judaism and of the Old Testament. It seems to me to 
have been a very damaging error in the defenders of 
the Christian faith, to blend Judaism with Christianity; 
to put on the same level of credibility the obscure 
traditions of the earliest ages and the gospel narratives 
with their transparent simplicity and self-evidencing 
truthfulness ; to make the reaUty of Christ's mission 
from heaven depend on verifying the capacity of 
Noah's ark, or reconciling the genealogies in the 
Chronicles with the various passages where the sev- 
eral names occur. I have no fault to find with these 
learned exercitations on the Old Testament. There is 
no portion of the records of remote antiquity so well 
deserving and so richly rewarding research. I believe 



10 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

in the divine mission of Moses, in the divine origin of 
Judaism, in the miracle and prophecy which attested 
and attended it. But Judaism is superseded. It is 
no longer, as once, the avenue to the Christian Church. 
We are not to become Jews, in order to become Chris- 
tians. What wonder then is it, that Providence should 
permit here and there a broken arch or a tottering 
wall in those once appointed, now disused, forecourts 
of heaven? That the evidence for Judaism was, in 
its own time, as clear and full as can have been needed 
or desired I cannot doubt. That it should be less 
obvious and attended with greater difficulties at the 
present day, is precisely what we should expect to 
find, if its age has passed and its mission has termi- 
nated. Instead of coming to Christ through Moses, 
our way evidently is to go to Moses through Christ. 
Independently of the New Testament, I see in the 
Old, along with numerous tokens of divinity which I 
cannot ignore or explain away, a great deal which I 
cannot understand, and know not how to appreciate. 
But Christ's full and emphatic recognition of Moses 
and the prophets constrains my own. My belief hangs 
on his knowledge. My ground, then, is that the evi- 
dences of Christianity carry Judaism along with Chris- 
tianity ; while Judaism, being so much more ancient, 
obscure, and open to cavil than Christianity, cannot 
essentially subsidize the Christian evidences. It must 
be remembered that the strength of a chain of evidence 
is precisely that of its weakest link ; and so far as we 
put in the same category, and attempt to prove by the 
same line of argument, the swimming of the prophet's 



GROUNDS OF EVIDENCE. II 

axe and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we attach to 
the latter event whatever of suspicion or increduHty 
may cHng to the former. While I can admit both as 
credible, I can imagine a condition of mind in which 
the former would seem to me a legend, the latter a 
glorious reality ; and I am sure that our course of 
reasoning with regard to the one should be such as 
should not clog it with the doubts and misgivings that 
might innocently exist as to the other. Concentrate 
your forces in the citadel, and from it you can defend 
the outworks. Divide and scatter your forces through 
a long array of antiquated and half-dismantled out- 
works, both outworks and citadel will suffer detriment 
from your feeble defence. 

So much as this it was necessary to say, in order 
that my omissions may be charged, not to my own 
lack of faith, but to my proposed course of argument. 

The proposition which I hope to maintain is, that 
science and Christianity, as I have defined them, so 
far from being mutually hostile, and from excluding and 
negativing each the other, in fact rest upon the same 
foundation, and must stand or fall together. They 
appeal to precisely the same sorts of evidence, and 
there is no principle on which these can be admitted in 
behalf of science, and set aside in the case of Christi- 
anity. Science and Christianity have, in common, 
three sources of proof or evidence, — testimony, ex- 
periment (or experience), and intuition. We will con- 
sider these successively ; though the first of the three, 
as demanding more detail of statement, will occupy 
the greater part of the course. 



12 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Under the head of testimony, it is incumbent on us 
to show that human testimony is as essential to the 
estabhshment of scientific truth as to the verification 
of Christianity, and that the testimony in behalf of 
Christianity is not inferior in completeness and credi- 
bility to that which underlies the truths of science. 

Scientific truth rests wholly on a basis of transmit- 
ted and accumulated testimony. In no department 
has any one man, or have the men of any one gene- 
ration, gone over the whole ground ; but observed 
facts have been collected from various and distant 
localities, and freshly observed facts have been col- 
lated with those that have come down from former 
times, and often from a very remote antiquity. Thus, 
in establishing the relations and the laws of the 
heavenly bodies, not only have astronomers in every 
zone contributed their observations ; but these have 
been compared with data derived in some instances 
from sources reaching back thousands of years. In- 
deed, there are some secular variations in planetary and 
stellar motion, infinitesimal in amount, yet of prime 
importance in theory, which cannot be verified with- 
out resort to the testimony of Hipparchus and other 
astronomers who flourished long before the Christian 
era. In geology, explorations have been made all the 
world over, and very important conclusions have often 
been drawn from or modified by the testimony of a 
single witness, — the journal of a first explorer of a 
previously unknown region. Moreover, as regards 
gradual changes on the earth's surface, the altera- 
tions of coast-lines, local elevations and depressions, 



HISTORICAL BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 3 

traces of volcanic^gency, testimony from the very 
birth of history to the present time has been sought, 
received as authentic, and built upon as furnishing a 
soUd ground for scientific inferences of the most com- 
prehensive character. Nor have the acknowledged 
misapprehensions, errors, and puerile theories of the 
ancient writers been regarded as invalidating their 
testimony as to facts that came properly within the 
sphere of their knowledge. Herodotus was grossly 
credulous ; Aristotle and Pliny maintained the most 
absurd opinions about the natural objects and phe- 
nomena that they describe : yet no one doubts their 
trustworthiness as to what they had themselves wit- 
nessed, or had received from witnesses worthy of 
credit. I am especially impressed by the intense 
stress which the advocates of the development-theory 
lay on even obscure and second-hand testimony, on 
the mere rumor of the creation of acari by artificial 
heat, or of some anticipative dawning of human intel- 
ligence or sensibility in dog or ape, bee or beaver. In 
fine, what now calls itself natural science a quarter of 
a century ago did not aspire to that name, but was 
merely natural history ; and now, so far as it is 
science, it rests wholly on natural history, much of 
it very ancient history ; but natural history, like all 
other history, is nothing else than human testimony. 
Christianity, equally with science, has an historical 
basis, and thus far depends on testimony. It has its 
historical records, to which it appeals for the life and 
the teachings of its Founder. There has been of late, 
in the theological world, almost a mania for discredit- 



H 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 



ing the genuineness and authenticity of these records, 
just as a generation earUer it was the fashion among 
classical scholars to deny the authorship of the Iliad 
by Homer, or by any one man or generation, and as 
there has appeared more recently in some quarters a 
tendency — not without a plausible show of argument 
— to maintain that Shakespeare did not write the 
plays called his. Meanwhile, the really great biblical 
scholars — such men as Tischendorf, who has no pie- 
tistic prejudices to warp his critical judgment — have 
seen no cause to change their belief in the genuine- 
ness of these writings. As for Strauss, he may be 
fairly set aside as of no authority as to a question of 
fact ; for he expressly admits that he shapes his 
chronology to suit his theories ; and, during his last 
ten years, he changed his chronological base more 
than half a century, solely because he found that the 
dates which, on documentary evidence, he had as- 
signed to the composition of the Gospels in the earlier 
editions of his '' Life of Jesus " were utterly incom- 
patible with his mythical hypothesis. Renan's " Life 
of Jesus, "on the other hand, manifests no more note- 
worthy trait than the author's proclivity to give to and 
claim for the authenticity of the Gospels the fullest 
credit, wherever their narratives come within the limits 
which he, in his assumed omniscience, knows that the 
divine Providence can never have transcended. 

Our first inquiry under the head of testimony must 
be as to the genuineness of these Gospels ; that is, their 
authorship by the men whose names they bear. The 
inquiry embraces many considerations that apply to 



ANTIQUITY OF THE GOSPELS. 1 5 

the four Gospels ;"?o^me which are pecuHar to the first 
three ; some which belong to the fourth Gospel only, 
the genuineness and remote antiquity of which are 
denied by not a few critics who admit that the other 
three were written in the apostolic times and by their 
reputed authors. With reference to the Gospels, col- 
lectively and individually, the stress of the question 
rests mainly on their antiquity ; for, if we can trace 
them back to the lifetime of the men whose names 
are attached to them, it can hardly be maintained 
that they are either of spurious origin or of gradual 
growth. 

In behalf of the antiquity of these books, the most 
conclusive argument is that furnished by the quota- 
tions from them and the coincidences with them in 
the writings of the early Christians. To appreciate 
this argument, let us take a closely parallel case. 
Suppose that of the many narratives of our late civil 
war that have been or will be written, there are four, 
and but four, by men personally conversant with the 
whole series of events, and worthy of being regarded 
as of conclusive authority, — we will say by A, B, C, 
and D, — and that these four will become the great 
historical monuments of this era of our history. What 
will take place as to quotations from these books } 
In the lifetime of the present generation they will 
not be quoted or referred to by name ; for the events 
they record will be so recent, that all who make men- 
tion of them will write from their own memory, or 
from such memoranda or fugitive documents as they 
may have on hand. There will thus be coincidence 



1 6 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

with these authorities, but no quotation. In the next 
generation they will be quoted, but seldom and infor- 
mally : for the men of that generation will have talked 
with the actors in the events described ; there will 
remain a multitude of floating traditions and loose 
documents, and many of the events will still be too 
familiarly known to need the citation of authorities ; 
while, the want of a standard history being not yet 
felt, those four histories, though known to be authentic, 
will not have assumed in the public esteem the para- 
mount distinction as standard works which will after- 
ward be accorded to them. There will, therefore, be 
in the writings of this next generation coincidence 
with our supposed histories, but few quotations from 
them and very scanty reference to them. But, with 
every successive year after the second generation 
shall have passed away, miscellaneous sources of in- 
formation will fail ; narratives of secondary value 
will disappear ; these four histories will be more 
and more relied on as of sole authority ; the quota- 
tions from them will grow more and more frequent, 
till at length they are appealed to by name when- 
ever any subject of which they treat is recalled. 
Now suppose that, two thousand years hence, there 
will be historical sceptics who will say, " No, these 
books cannot have been the original works of A, B, 
C, and D, who, as we know, were contemporary with 
the events recorded in them. They must have been 
compiled a century or two later." Suppose that sound 
and reasonable critics take up the theme of inquiry 
thus started, what aspect will the mass of quotations 



EVIDENCE FROM QUOTATION. 1 7 

from these histories bear ? They will appear in the 
form of a pyramid, with a very broad base in the later 
ages, but always diminishing from century to century, 
growing very slender toward the middle, and tapering 
to its apex in the earlier half, of the twentieth century ; 
beyond which there will be numerous close coinci- 
dences, but perhaps not a single quotation. The candid 
critic of the thirty-ninth century will then say, " There 
cannot be the slightest doubt that A, B, C, and D, who 
are known to have flourished in the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, wrote these books. Had they been 
later works, or by other hands, they could not have 
been quoted as they were in the twentieth and twenty- 
first centuries. The quotations from them by name 
begin too early to leave any doubt as to their author- 
ship. It is impossible that their real character as 
genuine compositions or otherwise should not have 
been known in the twentieth century ; and, if they 
had been even doubted, they would have been quoted 
as probably, or as supposed to be, or as pretending to 
be, the writings of A, B, C, and D, not as actually their 
writings." 

This precisely represents the case of the Gospels. 
The quotations from them form such a pyramid as I 
have described. After the first two or three centuries, 
we find them expressly quoted, and generally by name, 
whenever the events they record are referred to. As 
we go farther back toward the first century, we find 
them still quoted by name, but less and less frequently, 
till we come to writers that were contemporary with 
the Apostles, though their juniors, and they refer con- 



1 8 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

tinually to the events described in the Gospels, some- 
times in almost the very words of the evangelists, 
yet without citing them by name. This aspect of the 
Christian writings can. be accounted for only by sup- 
posing the Gospels to have been written by the apostles 
and apostolic men whose names they bear. Had they 
been later, or forged, or mere compilations, they could 
not have been so early quoted as of undoubted author- 
ity. They could not, if on any score doubtful, have 
come into general use among Christians without dis- 
putes as to their origin ; and these disputes would have 
left ineffaceable traces of themselves in the early 
Christian literature. 

There is yet another consideration which may deter- 
mine, not only the age of the Gospels, but the kind of 
men to which their authors must have belonged. The 
Gospels are written in Hellenistic Greek, — a dialect 
created by the transfusion of Hebrew idioms into 
Greek forms. There is hardly a sentence that does 
not betray the Hebrew origin and culture of the evan- 
gelists, who must needs have been born Jews. But 
it is universally admitted that in the middle of the 
second century these books were received throughout 
the Christian Church as of paramount authority with 
reference to the life and teachings of Christ. Yet, 
even in the lifetime of the apostles, feuds, not des- 
tined to be reconciled, broke out between the Jewish 
and Gentile Christians ; and before the end of the first 
century there seems to have been between these por- 
tions of the Church an entire separation and a bitter 
enmity. It is absolutely certain that, at a later period 



FREEDOM FROM ANACHRONISMS. 19 

than this, neither party would have received sacred 
books from the other as unquestionable and authori 
tative. Had the Gospels been written by post-apostolic 
Jews, they would have been either rejected by the 
Gentile churches, or received by them with marked 
suspicion and reserve. Of Jewish Christians, only the 
apostles and their coevals were recognized by Gentile 
converts as worthy of their entire confidence and fel- 
lowship. From this apostolic fraternity, then, the 
Gospels received by the Gentiles must have been 
derived. 

We have another proof that these books were writ- 
ten by men who were contemporary with Jesus Christ, 
or who at least were conversant with Palestine before 
the destruction of Jerusalem, in their freedom from 
anachronisms, and from mistakes as to persons and 
places. The Gospels are, as you know, full of desig- 
nations of time and names of places, and that, during 
an eventful period of Jewish history, when important 
political changes were continually occurring, when the 
tributary monarch of one year was likely to be the 
proscribed exile of the next, when even the names 
and boundaries of political divisions were undergoing 
frequent alterations. Of this whole period we have a 
detailed history by the Jew Josephus ; and we find no 
discrepancy between his narrative and the circum- 
stantial references in the Gospels. This negative 
fact has a positive bearing of the highest signifi- 
cance. A writer who undertakes local details in a 
field with which he has had no personal acquaintance, 
never fails to betray his ignorance. Even elaborate 



20 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE, 

histories — on sure ground while describing the 
march of grand events — when they undertake to 
portray scenes on a contracted theatre, always con- 
trive to misplace some of the actors or the incidents ; 
and conscientious historians, aware of this liability, 
have often prepared themselves for their task by mi- 
nute personal investigation. There are also not a 
few .. fictitious works — novels, tales, series of letters 
— which have been written expressly as imitations 
of antiquity, in which by an antique style, and by 
carefully framed references to well-known historical 
personages, places, and events, it has been designed 
to maintain the illusion undisturbed in the reader's 
mind. Some of these books, like Barthelemy's 
'* Travels of Anacharsis " and the English " Athe- 
nian Letters," have been written by men of pre-emi- 
nent classical scholarship. Yet you can find no work 
of this kind in which the writer does not sometimes 
blunder or forget himself, fall into an anachronism, 
or insert some incident out of place. Josephus knew 
the whole ground thoroughly, as no one could by any 
possibility have known it after the fall of Jerusalem. 
Had not the writers of the Gospels possessed the same 
conversance with Palestine while Jerusalem was still 
standing, it is a literary impossibility that, even with 
the history of Josephus in their hands, they should 
not have left traces of their ignorance of the country, 
which lynx-eyed criticism would long ago have de- 
tected and laid bare. The minute and manifold coin- 
cidences with history, as illustrated and confirmed by 
modern research, show that the evangelists in de- 



COINCIDENCES WITH HISTORY. 21 

scribing transactions and events in Palestine were on 
their own ground ; that is, must have been Jews in 
Palestine before a.d. 70. 

In addition to this absence of discrepancies, it 
would be easy to trace not a few latent and mani- 
festly undesigned coincidences between the Gospels 
and exterior history. One must suffice. The word 
constantly employed by the evangelists, and in the New 
Testament generally, to denote a soldier, is a noun 
which may signify a man under military orders, whether 
in active service or not.* Once only occurs the parti- 
ciple used to designate not merely soldiers, but soldiers 
in active service.f This is in Luke's Gospel, where he 
speaks of the soldiers ;that resorted to the preaching 
of John the Baptist. It is a common belief that the 
period of the Saviour's lifetime was an era of universal 
peace. Moreover, that desert region on the banks of 
the Jordan was not a place where soldiers on garrison 
duty, or belonging to a peace establishment, were likely 
to be found. Thus the presence of persons who could 
be designated by the noun referred to was improbable, 
much more that of soldiers on actual military duty, to 
whom the participle evidently points. But we learn 
from Josephus that there may have been soldiers in 
active service passing down the valley of the Jordan 
at that very time. It must have been about this time 
that Herod Antipas, of Galilee, repudiated his wife, 
the daughter of Aretas, a petty Arabian king, in order 
to marry Herodias, to whose hatred John fell a victim. 
There had been previously hostile passages about 

* I>Tpano)T^C. t ^Tparevofievoc. 



22 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

boundaries between Herod and his father-in-law. 
Herod sent against Aretas a small army, which was 
betrayed and destroyed. This catastrophe, it seems 
most probable, took place a year or two later, after the 
death of John the Baptist ; but a desultory warfare had 
then been going on for some length of time between 
Herod and Aretas, and any military expedition of 
Herod against his father-in-law would have taken 
John's preaching-ground on its way.* 

The proofs that I have adduced are conclusive 
in behalf of the authorship of the Gospels in the 
age when they purport to have been written, and by 
men belonging, if I may so speak, to the apostolic 
circle; no mean witnesses, as regards their credibility, 
even if they were other than Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
and John. 

One word only in conclusion. In my reasoning 
thus far — and I shall endeavor to adhere to the 
same rule through my whole course — I have taken 
and claimed no advantage for the Gospels because 
they are sacred books, and seem to me of vital im- 
portance. I have reasoned as I would about books 
of contested origin that had come down to us from 
the ancient times of Athens or of Rome. I think 
that I have, and I shall endeavor to give you, as 
good reasons for my belief in the genuineness of the 
Gospels as I have for that of Plutarch's Lives or of 
Virgil's ^neid. 

* See Appendix, note A. 



LECTURE II. 

GENUINENESS OF THE GOSPELS. — TESTIMONY OF CHRISTIAN 
FATHERS. — OF HERETICS. — OF ENEMIES. — RULES OF 
EVIDENCE. — AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPELS. — THEIR 
AUTHORS COMPETENT WITNESSES. — THE GOSPELS COM- 
PLEMENTING AND INTERPRETING ONE ANOTHER. 

TN my last Lecture I sought to prove the antiquity of 
■^ the Gospels. I showed you that we have reason 
to believe that they could not have been written later 
than the apostolic age ; that is, that they are undoubt- 
edly works of the first Christian century. We will now 
consider the proof that they were written by the men 
whose names they bear. 

The first question that suggests itself is, Why 
should we not believe that the Gospels were written 
by these men ? We have precisely the same reason 
for so believing that we have for our belief in author- 
ship generally. When we find an author's name 
attached to a book with the earliest mention of it, and 
that name remains so attached from generation to 
generation without its rightful use being once called 
in question, the probability is little less than certainty 
that the name properly belongs to it. Thus, although 
there is no quotation or mention of the " Theogony " 
or of the " Works and Days " until some four hundred 
years from the time when they were written, because 



24 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

when mention of them is first found they are spoken 
of as Hesiod's, and no doubt is expressed as to their 
authorship in the age when such reasons for doubt as 
there might have been could not have grown obso- 
lete, classical scholars have consented to call them 
Hesiod's, with a unanimity broken only by certain 
extremists of that class of critics whose fundamental 
canon is that " things are not what they seem." The 
Histories of Herodotus and Thucydides are known to 
be theirs only on this ground ; and the case is the 
same with most books, modern no less than ancient. 
We have no detailed account of their inception, writ- 
ing, and publication. All that we know is, that a certain 
book appeared under a certain name, and that no one 
ever gainsaid that name, or. suggested that another 
name ought to have taken its place. Now, these four 
Gospels of ours are called the Gospels of Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John, as early as we can find any 
traces of their existence : they were never called by 
the names of any other men ; nor, so far as I know, 
till the last century, did any one ever deny or doubt 
that they were written by these men. 

But we are not left to this general consideration. 
We can, with entire distinctness and confidence, trace 
the very four Gospels that we now have as not only 
in existence, but universally received in the Church, 
under the names which they now bear, at a period so 
early that a false theory as to their origin could not 
by any possibility have obtained undisputed currency. 
In this line of argument I need but two names. There 
is, indeed, a cloud of witnesses that might be adduced ; 



TESTIMONY OF O RIG EN. 25 

and the Christian apologist finds his only embarrass- 
ment, not that of penury, but that of superabundant 
wealth. The voluminous testimony of the first four 
centuries is invaluable : there is ready access to it in 
Lardner's great work and in other less complete col- 
lections ; but there is no subject to which we might 
apply with more literal truth than to this the scrip- 
tural saying, " Out of the mouth of two or three wit- 
nesses the whole matter shall be established." 

My chief witnesses are Origen and Irenaeus. Dri- 
ven was born about a.d. 185, and was known as a 
scholar and a writer till after the middle of the third 
century. He was, perhaps, the most learned man of 
his time, and realized more fully than any other person 
in classic or Christian antiquity the idea which we 
attach to the designation of a critical scholar. He 
prepared with great skill and care what would now be 
called a critical edition of the Septuagint, collated with 
other Greek versions of the Old Testament. He was 
a zealous collector of manuscripts, having by his 
spiritual services secured for his literary pursuits 
the affluent aid of a man of large wealth. He, in 
his various books, quotes from our present Gospels 
so copiously that, were they lost, we could almost 
replace them from his quotations. He describes the 
four Gospels, and names their authors, giving the order 
of their composition precisely as they are arranged in 
our present Bible. He speaks of them as " the ele- 
ments of the faith of the Church ; " again, as " not rare 
books, read only by a few studious persons, but in the 
most common use ; " still farther, as " received with- 



26 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE, 

out controversy ; " and yet once more, as "believed by 
all the churches of God." He was in the habit of com- 
paring different copies of the Gospels, and commenting 
on the various readings which he found, which are in 
every instance identical with or similar to the various 
readings to be collected from now existing manu- 
scripts. There is not the faintest indication that the 
Gospels which Origen used contained any thing that 
is not in our present Gospels ; while the great number 
and variety of his quotations from them, his comments 
on their phraseology, his frequent analysis and exposi- 
tion of single texts from them word by word, and his 
repeated mention of the various readings, render it 
absolutely certain that he had in his hands our present 
four Gospels substantially as they are now. As Origen 
was of Christian parentage, of liberal education, and a 
public teacher of religion from the age of seventeen, 
his testimony must of necessity cover the whole period 
embraced within his personal memory. The Gospels 
must have been regarded in his youth and childhood 
as he regarded them ; else, whatever his own opinion 
of them, he could not have spoken of them as uni- 
versally received without controversy, 

Irenaeus died about the time of Origen's entrance 
on public life. He was contemporary with Clement 
of Alexandria, who was Origen's teacher. He thus 
represents the generation from which Origen derived 
his knowledge of the Gospels and his reverence for 
them. He was a man of no little learning, very ex- 
tensive travel, and high official standing. He is 
spoken of by Tertullian as " a diligent inquirer into 



TESTIMONY OF IREN^US. 27 

all sorts of opinions." He was a native of Asia Minor, 
was for many years a bishop in Gaul, and had numer- 
ous correspondents in all parts of the world in which 
Christianity had gained a foothold. He, beyond a 
doubt, had received the very same traditions about 
the Gospels that were transmitted to Origen, and it 
is certain that he had in his possession precisely the 
same Gospels. He writes, " We have not received 
the knowledge of the way of salvation by any others 
than those by whom the Gospel has come down to 
us ; which Gospel they first preached, and afterward, 
by the will of God, committed to writing that it might 
be the foundation and pillar of our faith." He then 
goes on to describe the four Gospels, the circumstances 
of their composition, and the precise view with which 
each was written. He cites the opening sentences of 
each of the four, which correspond verbally with the 
first sentences of our Gospels. He quotes frequently 
from the Gospels, and the passages quoted are in every 
instance to be found in our Gospels. He gives a de- 
tailed catalogue of the contents of Luke's Gospel, dis- 
criminating those portions which are peculiar to Luke 
from those which are common to him and one or more 
of the other evangelists. There cannot be the slightest 
doubt that he had the same Gospels that we have, and 
that he believed them to have been written by Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John. 

Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, who had been a 
disciple of the evangelist John, and he tells of Poly- 
carp's relating his conversations with John and others 
who had been with Jesus, and of his repeating what 



28 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

he had heard from these eye and ear witnesses about 
the preaching and the miracles of Jesus, all of which, 
he says, Polycarp described " in accordance with what 
is written," that is, in the Gospels. Irenaeus must have 
been born a little before the death of John the evange- 
list. If the Gospels were of post-apostolic authorship, 
they must have been written during his lifetime. He 
was, as we have seen, familiar with the traditions of 
the apostolic times ; and he records as among these 
traditions the names of the authors of the Gospels, 
the circumstances under which they were ■ written, 
and the reasons for writing each of them. He knew 
whether Polycarp had these books, and held them in 
veneration. If he had never heard of them from 
Polycarp, it would not have been possible to palm 
them off upon him as apostolic writings, and to make 
him believe that they had come down as such without 
Polycarp's knowing any thing about them. Strauss (in 
his " Life of Jesus for the German People ") and the 
Tubingen critics say that the Gospel of John could 
not have been written before a.d. 150, and they date 
those of Mark and Luke but about fifteen years earher. 
In A.D. 150, Irenseus cannot have been much less than 
forty years of age, and had already been for some years 
a preacher of Christianity ; yet, according to these 
critics, he was made to believe that brand-new books, 
of which he had never heard from his teachers or from 
his seniors in the Christian ministry, were really writ- 
ten by members of the apostolic company, and consti- 
tuted, as he styles them, "the pillar and foundation of 
the Church which is spread over all the earth." It is 



THE CONTEMPORARIES OF I RE N^ US. 29 

perfectly evident that books of which Irenseus speaks 
so confidently coiikl not have been written in his time, 
but must have been regarded by his venerable teacher 
and by Christians contemporary with him in the same 
light in which Irenseus himself regarded them. 

Let us review the several stages of our argument. 
Origen's numerous quotations and textual criticisms 
enable us to identify the Gospels which he had with 
our own. He speaks of their unquestioned and uni- 
versal reception and authority in his time as writings 
of the apostoHc age. That reception and authority 
could not have begun to be in his lifetime ; else it 
could not have been universal and unquestioned. 
Irenaeus belonged to the generation from which 
Origen must have derived his Christian traditions. 
Irenaeus gives accounts of the Gospels coinciding 
point for point with those of Origen, and quotes 
from them so copiously, and describes them so 
minutely, as to make it certain that he had the same 
Gospels. Irenaeus received his Christian traditions 
from those who had been intimately acquainted with 
the apostles and their friends, and who could not have 
been mistaken as to the books purporting to have 
emanated from that circle. 

I might close my argument here ; but I will ask 
leave to dwell a little longer on the testimony of 
Irenaeus, in connection with parallel testimonies of 
similar bearing. Contemporary with Irenaeus in 
Gaul, were Theophilus at Antioch, Tertullian at 
Carthage, and Clement at Alexandria. They all 
quote, as from the Gospels, passages that are in our 



30 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Gospels ; they all speak of the Gospels as works of 
the apostolic age and of unquestioned authority ; and 
Tertullian and Clement give descriptions of them and 
of the circumstances and causes of their authorship 
closely resembling those of Irenaeus. The first re- 
mark to be made on their testimony is, that it is not 
theirs alone. They were representative men, official 
personages, organs of Christian communities. They 
cite and describe the Gospels, not merely as histories 
which they receive, but as books approved and be- 
lieved, received and read, by all Christian men. Their 
voice is that of the whole Church. 

In the next place, Irenaeus and his contemporaries, 
by their testimony, render it certain that these Gospels 
were generally and numerously diffused in every part 
of the Church ; that is, that there existed many thou- 
sand copies of them : and their quotations are suffi- 
ciently ample and various to show that they had not 
different but the same books under the name of 
Gospels in Gaul, at Antioch, at Carthage, and at 
Alexandria. Books were then multiplied and circu- 
lated with a slowness of which it is now hard to con- 
ceive. It must have taken a longer period than the 
lifetime of one generation to give these books the 
universal currency which it appears that they had in 
the latter part of the second century. Suppose them 
written (as Strauss and Baur maintain that they were) 
when Irenaeus was a young man in Asia Minor, it is 
utterly impossible that, by the time he was established 
as a bishop in the heart of Gaul, they should have 
obtained such a circulation and prestige in every part 



JUSTIN MARTYR. 3t 

of the empire as to make him forget that he had never 
seen them or heard of them in his youth, and imagine 
that they had been books of standard authority before 
he was born. This hypothesis trenches so far on 
the miraculous that we can hardly conceive of it as 
tenable in quarters where miracles are repudiated 
with scorn. 

Irenaeus is probably the earliest author who ex- 
pressly mentions the four Gospels, and formally 
quotes from either of them ; and this corresponds 
to what we should expect on the ground stated in 
my last lecture. As we recede nearer the apostolic 
age, we find in the Christian writers coincidence 
without formal quotation. There is one of these 
writers, however, who forms, as it were, an inter- 
mediate link between the epoch of express quotation 
and that of non-quotation ; and who has often been 
adduced as a virtual witness against the antiquity and 
genuineness of the Gospels. I refer to Justin Martyr. 
It is urged as a conclusive argument for the non- 
apostolic and late origin of our Gospels that he does 
not once mention them ; while yet, in his own words 
and way, he gives almost their entire contents, 
occasionally referring to what he calls " Memoirs by 
the Apostles," * and in one place, " Memoirs by the 
Apostles, which are called Gospels." f It is alleged 
that these Memoirs could not have been identical with 
our Gospels, inasmuch as Justin relates some, though 
very few sayings of Jesus and incidents in his life, 

* Ta 'ATTO/iV7]fj.ovevjj,aTa ruu AroaroTiDV. 
t "A KaTiCLTat EvayyeXta. 



32 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

which are not to be found in our Gospels.* As for his 
omission of the names of the evangelists, it must be 
remembered that his extant writings are chiefly apolo- 
getic, addressed to heathen emperors, and designed for 
heathen readers, to whom the names of those obscure 
Jewish writers would have been a matter of indiffer- 
ence. Then too, Justin, though not many years earlier 
than Irenaeus, was born in Samaria, spent a large part 
of his life in Palestine, and must have had numerous 
sources of information by tradition or from the narra- 
tives of survivors of the apostolic age, entirely inde- 
pendent of the written Gospels, which then held by no 
means the sole and undivided place as repertories of 
knowledge about Jesus Christ which the next genera- 
tion assigned to them, and were not read so constantly, 
and so absorbed word by word into the memory, as 
they were when the links of oral tradition became 
feeble and treacherous. Justin had, no doubt, heard 
a great deal more about Jesus than he had read. He 
had heard many of those things which, it is said in 
the sequel to the fourth Gospel, were too numerous 
to be written ; and a few of them — probably authen- 
tic ; for they are not in a single instance inconsistent 
in time, place, or character with our canonical Gospels 
— found their way into his treatises. He writes, as it 
seems to me, about the life of Christ very much as we 
should write about our late civil war for the informa- 
tion of foreign and unfriendly readers. We should 
have Abbot's, Greeley's, and other histories at hand, 
to refresh or verify our recollection ; and we should 

* See Appendix, note B. 



CRITICAL SKILL OF THE ANCIENTS. 33 

be very likely to mention these histories collectively, 
" As we read in the histories of the time ; " but we 
should hardly name them, seldom quote them, should, 
for the most part, tell in our own way what we had 
seen or heard at the time, or had learned afterward 
from those personally concerned in the events nar- 
rated, and should undoubtedly tell some things that 
are not recorded in the histories. I have no doubt 
that it is our four Gospels to which Justin so often 
refers ; but, even were it otherwise, his testimony is 
none the less valuable, as it shows that there were 
afloat and on record, in the generation next succeeding 
the apostles, the same accounts of Jesus Christ that 
are contained in our Gospels, and no account of a 
different style or tenor.* 

It is often alleged, in answer to the arguments for 
the genuineness of the Gospels, that the early Chris- 
tian centuries were an uncritical age, when questions 
of authorship were not likely to be discussed, and 
when a false name might have easily become attached 
to any writing without protest or inquiry. We have, 
however, ample reason for the opposite opinion. I do 
not remember, indeed, any classic writing of those 
times, in which the specific question of the genuine- 
ness of a book is discussed ; but there are treatises 
of Cicero and chapters of Quinctilian which are 
masterworks of critical skill and acumen, showing 
precisely that keen curiosity and close observation 
as to the details, conditions, and surroundings of 
literary composition, which constitute the art of the 

* See Appendix, note C. 
2* 



34 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

modern critic. Among Christian writers, Origen may- 
be fittingly termed an eminently discriminating and 
skilful critical editor of the Septuagint ; while his 
labors on the New Testament show a careful com- 
parison of texts, and a clear recognition of the canons 
by which decision is to be made in doubtful cases. 
Then, as regards the special question of authorship, 
we have in a well-known passage of Eusebius, in the 
half-century next succeeding that in which Origen 
died, proof that the importance of the inquiry was 
fully understood, and that special care had been 
bestowed upon its answer. Eusebius was a man of 
very great learning. He undertook to write the 
history of the Church ; and prepared himself for this 
work by extended study, travel, and correspondence, 
and by collecting, at great expense, from every portion 
of the empire such books as might aid him in his 
enterprise. His work shows manifest tokens of the 
most faithful research into the beginnings and early 
growth of Christianity, and a diligent and judicious 
use of all authorities extant. He divides the books 
in the hands of Christians into three classes, — those 
acknowledged as genuine,* among which are our four 
Gospels ; books disputed,! though well known, and 
approved by many, among which are included most 
of the (so-called) Catholic Epistles ; and those which 
are undoubtedly spurious. | He expresses doubt 
whether the Apocalypse belongs to the first or the 
third class ; that is, whether the apostle John's name 

* 'Ofioh)yoviJ,evai ypa^ai. f 'Avnlsyouevai ypa(pai, 

X NoiJai ypa^ac. 



GNOSTIC TESTIMONY. 35 

had been truly or "falsely connected with it. In a 
subsequent sentence, he speaks of some books as 
disputed, notwithstanding that they are recognized 
by most ecclesiastical writers. What could demon- 
strate more clearly than such language as this, that 
the authorship of the sacred books had been subjected 
to searching investigation, and that these Gospels of 
ours, as contradistinguished from books recognized by 
most, had been recognized by all Christian writers ? 

Nor let it be imagined that Eusebius was ready to 
accept testimony without challenging the witnesses. 
I know of hardly a finer specimen of the acute and 
skilled sifting of testimony than his chapter about 
Papias. He, in the first place, corrects a careless 
statement of Irenseus about Papias. Then, speaking 
of Papias as a man of Hmited understanding, he rejects 
certain traditions reported by him from unknown 
sources, but lays emphatic stress on such as he 
professed to have received directly from the com- 
panions of the apostles. From this same Papias he 
quotes a cursory mention of Matthew's and Mark's 
Gospels, and a statement which shows what I have 
already dwelt upon, that books like the Gospels, how- 
ever genuine and authentic, could not be estimated 
at their full value, so long as oral tradition remained 
fresh and clear. " I do not think," Papias is quoted 
as saying, " that I derived so much benefit from books 
as from the living voice of those that are still sur- 
viving." * 

I have thus far drawn testimony only from men who 

* See Appendix, note D. 



36 CHRISTIANIl^Y AND SCIENCE. 

were in the direct line of spiritual descent from the re- 
puted writers of the Gospels ; and though they had the 
best opportunities of knowing that of which they testi- 
fied, it may be said that their subj ective faith, which may 
have been the result less of evidence than of personal 
influence, made them partial witnesses for the reputed 
records of their faith. The same cannot be said, how- 
ever, of the Gnostics, who had every possible motive to 
throw the Gospels into discredit, if they could have 
done so with any show of reason. The theology of the 
Gnostics was an incongruous and deformed hybrid 
of the Oriental Dualism and Christianity. All their 
mumerous sects were agreed in maintaining that the 
supremely good God of the New Testament was a 
different being from the God of the Old Testament, 
who was the creator of the world and the author of 
the Mosaic theocracy ; and that Jesus descended from 
heaven, not in body, — for he had no body, — but in 
spirit, to reveal the supremely good God, and to put 
away the imperfection and evil that deformed the 
earthly domain of the Creator. Of these sects, the 
Marcionites received as of authority the Gospel of 
Luke, with some omissions of passages unfavorable 
to their views, and disavowed the authority of the 
other three, not because they questioned their genu- 
ineness, but for a reason which only bears added 
attestation to their genuineness, — because they were 
so thoroughly Jewish. The remaining sects of Gnos- 
tics received all four of the Gospels as genuine, and 
quoted them constantly in their controversial writ- 
ings, garbling them, indeed, and putting text and text 



WRITERS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 37 

together, so as often to elicit from the two a meaning 
that can have belonged to neither. Irenaeus and 
Tertullian are full of complaints about their methods 
of quoting the Gospels. Irenaeus says, — and the 
sentence, for the indirect evidence it gives, is worth 
volumes of more direct testimony, — " There is such 
assurance concerning the Gospels, that the heretics 
themselves bear testimony to them, and every one of 
them endeavors to prove his doctrines from them." 

Now it is certain that the Gnostics derived no 
countenance for their views from the Gospels. It 
would have been very much to their purpose to prove 
these books to be of late or doubtful origin, jottings 
down of floating traditions, or compilations by un- 
authorized editors. It cost them a vast amount of 
trouble, contradiction, and absurdity, to quote the 
Gospels as they persisted in doing ; and their persist- 
ency is to be accounted for only on the ground that 
they believed the Gospels to have emanated from the 
apostolic circle. Moreover, as Gnosticism may be 
traced back to the very lifetime of the apostles, and 
as the Gnostics would have run counter to all known 
laws of belief and action, had they midway on their 
career accepted as of primitive authority books that 
then first came to hand, the conclusion is inevitable 
that the Gospels are as old as Gnosticism, and, if so, 
that they are in date and authority what they pur- 
port to be. 

The early writers against Christianity may also be 
cited as witnesses to the genuineness of the Gospels. 
They quote very largely from the Gospels, assume 



38 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

their contents as the basis and substance of Christian 
behef, and refer to them as written by the immediate 
disciples of Jesus. Only one of these hostile writers 
lived early enough to be of importance as a direct 
witness to primitive tradition ; namely, Celsus, who 
was contemporary with Irenaeus. His book is lost ; 
but we have Origen's answer to it, in which he con- 
stantly quotes the very words of Celsus. In these 
numerous extracts the author perpetually refers to 
narratives and sayings contained in our Gospels, so 
as to make it certain that he had these and no other 
written records of the faith which he assailed ; and he 
speaks of the statements thus quoted as "written by the 
disciples," and, in one instance, as " your own writings, 
in addition to which we need no other testimony." 
These books cannot, therefore, have been just coming 
into circulation in the time of Irenaeus ; but must 
even then have been currently regarded, by enemies 
no less than by friends, as works of the primitive 
disciples. The other hostile writers who might be 
named, like Celsus, treat the Gospels as the undis- 
puted records of what Jesus was believed by his 
disciples to have done and said ; and they are of 
the same value as witnesses with such Christian 
writers as were contemporary with them respec- 
tively.* 

I have thus shown you, in the last and in the pres- 

* The testimony in behalf of Christianity, derived from the writ- 
ings of its early Pagan and Jewish adversaries, is exhibited with equal 
thoroughness and candor, in the second volume of " Lowell Lectures 
on the Evidences of Christianity," by John G. Palfrey, D.D., LL.D. 



b 



STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS. 39 

ent lecture, that the^restimony of orthodox Christians, 
heretics, and enemies, is unanimous and manifold in 
affirming the authorship of our Gospels in the apostolic 
age by primitive disciples, and, wherever names are 
given, by the men whose names are now attached to 
them. This authorship has been denied, not on the 
ground of the discovery of any new testimony, but on 
the score of the alleged inadequacy of that which has 
been cited. To me it seems more than sufficient, even 
had there been adverse opinions in the third and fourth 
centuries, of which we find not a vestige. Opinions 
of later times have no validity as evidence. We may 
apply here a principle of evidence recognized in all the 
courts of Christendom ; namely, that involved in the 
statute of limitations, which is not a decree of arbi- 
trary legislation, but a law of nature and a dictate of 
common sense. Permit me to illustrate its application 
here.* If against a claim openly made and maintained, 
there be valid adverse claims, it is morally certain that 
they will be presented while the evidence for them is 
fresh, the witnesses living, and the whole case capable 
of being carefully revised. Experience in different 
countries and ages can easily determine the extreme 
limit of time within which valid counter-claims are 
likely to appear. After this limit is passed, if adverse 
claims are presented, not only the legal, but the moral 

* The author is indebted for the suggestion of this legal analogy, 
as also for a similar analogy introduced at the close of the third Lec- 
ture, to his friend Rev. Francis Wharton, D.D., LL.D., whose well- 
known legal acumen and learning are most happily employed in the 
defence and illustration of the Christian faith and its records. 



40 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

probability is that they are fraudulent claims, set on 
foot for base ends, in reliance on the absence of origi- 
nal witnesses or the disappearance of original docu- 
ments. 

The first three Christian centuries were a period of 
perpetual conflict between Christianity and rival pre- 
established religions. During this whole time — of 
which we have many surviving literary monuments, 
not a few fragments of the writings of enemies, and, 
in the works of the Christian apologists, the pre- 
cise moulds in which objections were cast (for the 
answers of course show what the objections were) — 
we have not the slightest trace of a doubt as to the 
genuineness of the Gospels. During this same period 
there were, also, in the Church heresies wild and strange, 
forms of belief so thoroughly extra-Christian in their 
origin and type, that we can hardly imagine how their 
disciples could have coveted and claimed the Chris- 
tian name. Though one and another of these sects, 
on doctrinal grounds, disclaimed the authority of 
portions of this or that Gospel, and one of them set 
aside three of the Gospels, — just as Luther, without 
doubting that St. James wrote the epistle that bears 
his name, called it an epistle of straw, because he did 
not like its doctrines, — there is not on record a single 
instance in which any heretical sect or writer denied 
the genuineness of either of the Gospels. They would 
have been greatly relieved and comforted by such 
denial ; that they did not make it proves that they 
could not make it. Now if with the means of estab- 
lishing the spuriousness of these writings within 



AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPELS. 4 1 

reach ; with the origins of Christianity familiarly 
known by intelligent and hostile Jews scattered all 
over the world, and by not a few of the cosmopolitan 
Roman officials of various grades, civil and military, 
who, for a time in Palestine, were subsequently dis- 
persed through the empire, — if, I say, with these 
materials for sustaining the adverse charge, the early 
authorship of the Gospels by their reputed writers 
remained unquestioned, subsequent doubts might 
seem ruled out by a reasonable statute of limi- 
tations. If there existed actual grounds for such 
doubts, they would have been exhibited and urged in 
the primitive ages, when the materials for substanti- 
ating them still existed. Doubts that have sprung up 
almost in our own time might be fairly dismissed 
without examining their alleged merits, as we would 
dismiss, without examination, a legal claim which had 
been suffered to lie over for many years by those who 
had the strongest interest in maintaining it, if valid. 
It is not my intention, however, to leave these doubts 
unexamined. Those that relate to the testimony of 
the early centuries have been already considered. 
Others, based on the contents of the Gospels, will 
come before us in due time. 

I have confined myself thus far to the question of 
the genuineness of the Gospels. Their authenticity will 
be a subject of future inquiry. But I will avail my- 
self of the few moments that remain of the present 
hour to offer some preliminary considerations on this 
head. 

In the first place, the genuineness of these writings 



42 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

is of itself a strong argument for their authenticity. 
The authors had the best opportunities for knowing 
what they recorded. Matthew and John were the 
companions of Jesus for many months, and John 
took care of the mother of Jesus after her Son had 
departed from the earth. The house of Mark's 
mother was one of the rallying points for the Chris- 
tians of Jerusalem shortly after their Master had left 
them ; and there is, therefore, hardly a doubt that he 
and his mother had been disciples of Jesus during his 
lifetime. Moreover, uniform tradition assures us that 
Mark's Gospel was virtually Peter's, Mark having 
written what he heard from Peter ; and there are 
in the Gospel strong marks of the fervid genius of 
Peter, especially in the preservation, in several in- 
stances, of the precise Syro-Chaldaic words used by 
Jesus under circumstances of peculiar interest. Such 
a mind as Peter's would have treasured up the mere 
sounds that fell from his Master's lips, and he would 
have been the very man to reproduce them even where 
they were unintelligible till interpreted. Luke was 
an intimate friend of the apostles : his name is found 
in some old lists of the seventy disciples, — lists, in- 
deed, whose authenticity cannot be affirmed, yet which 
are from their very nature among the things least 
likely to be forged ; and so graphic is his description 
of the walk to Emmaus, that I cannot resist the 
belief that he was the companion of Cleopas on that 
memorable occasion. These men had, then, the re- 
quisite knowledge. 

Had they any motive for writing such narratives, if 



THE GOSPELS INDEPENDENT RECORDS. 43 

they knew them to be-false ? We can conceive of none. 
On the other hand, it was for their earthly interest to 
suppress the whole marvellous story, or to leave it to 
take shape as it might, if they knew it to be true. 
They had nothing to gain, and every thing to lose, by 
writing and circulating such narratives as these books 
contain. For the cause in behalf of which they wrote, 
they and all their associates were sufferers, many even 
to death. 

But might they not have been deluded } Their style 
is not that of madmen, or of men laboring under hal- 
lucination. They write very calmly. No one can talk 
about the events they describe with as little emotion 
as they manifest in writing about them. I know of 
no way of accounting for a style like theirs, except 
by supposing that they had become so much accus- 
tomed to experiences on a higher plane than that of 
common humanity as to be almost unconscious of 
their unique position, — just as natives of Switzerland 
might talk and write quietly and coldly about snow- 
peaks, glaciers, and avalanches, the very thought of 
which quickens our pulses, and as to which we are 
capable only of glowing and enthusiastic utterance. 

It next claims our emphatic notice, that the relation 
of these four books to one another is such as to con- 
firm the authenticity of each and all. The writers 
manifestly did not copy from one another. The 
resemblances and parallelisms of the synoptic Gospels 
will be a subject for distinct consideration hereafter, 
and may, I think, be fully accounted for. But that 
they were not copyists of one another's books is very 



44 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

manifest, both from the materials of transcendent in- 
terest peculiar to each, which no copyist would have 
been willing to omit, and from the frequent occurrence 
of just such unessential discrepancies as would natu- 
rally and necessarily be found in independent narra- 
tives. Then, too, in every instance in which a many- 
sided action is described, each writes as if he had 
regarded it from a different point of view. Thus, in 
the narrative of the resurrection of Jesus, while they 
all record the main fact and a very few of the acces- 
sory facts, each relates circumstances which may 
have escaped the notice or eluded the knowledge of 
the others, had they belonged to different groups of 
disciples, or lodged' at different houses, or first became 
apprised of what was taking place at different moments 
of that eventful day. 

There are also many cases in which one of the 
Gospels supplies what is necessary to the clear under- 
standing of the others. For instance, in each of the 
first three Gospels we have a list of the twelve apostles. 
In Matthew and Luke the lists are given in pairs, 
" Simon and Andrew, James and John, Philip and 
Bartholomew ; " but there appears no reason for so 
grouping them. In Mark's Gospel they are not thus 
grouped ; but in that alone we are told that Jesus 
sent them forth to preach '' by two and two." 

Another case of the same kind may be found in the 
narrative of Christ's appearance before Pilate. Accord- 
ing to Luke, he is charged with calling himself a king. 
Pilate asks if he is the king of the Jews, and on his 
admitting the charge, strangely enough for a Roman 



THE GOSPELS EXPLAIN ONE ANOTHER. 45 

procurator, says at -once, " I find no fault in him." 
This can be explained only by John's narrative, in 
which Jesus says to Pilate, " My kingdom is not of 
this world. To this end was I born, and for this 
cause came I into the world, that I should bear wit- 
ness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth 
heareth my voice ; " that is, belongs to my kingdom. 
Pilate, thus convinced that as against the Roman 
sovereignty the alleged kingship has no significance, 
says very naturally, and in accordance with the fitness 
of his official position, " I find no fault in him." 

These are specimens of numerous instances in 
which one evangeUst, after the manner of an un- 
artistic, inexperienced writer, tells but part of a story, 
omitting what alone could fully explain it, and the 
explanation is supplied by a like fragmentary state- 
ment of another of the four. In fine, the Gospels are 
full, not of superficial, obtrusive coincidences, which 
are always suspicious and always abound in falsified 
narratives, but of latent coincidences, such as reveal 
themselves only on close inspection and diligent study, 
such as could never have been invented or contrived, 
such as can be explained by no hypothesis other than 
the substantial truth of the several narratives. 

We have lingered thus far, as it were, in the outer 
courts. In the next Lecture we will approach — may 
it be with profound and loving reverence ! — the holy 
of hohes, and consider Jesus himself, in the human 
and divine personality in which his historians present 
him, as the most conclusive argument for the authen- 
ticity of those biographies which enshrine the faith 
and hope of our race. 



LECTURE III. 

INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF AUTHENTICITY. — THE HUMAN 
VIRTUES OF CHRIST. — HIS ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS 
TEACHINGS. — HIS INFLUENCE. — THE DIVINE SIDE OF 
HIS CHARACTER. — HIS SUPERHUMAN AVORKS NEITHER 
IMPOSTURE NOR DELUSION. — ADMISSIONS OF EARLY 
ADVERSARIES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

TN my last two Lectures I have endeavored to establish 
•*• the genuineness and authenticity of our canonical 
Gospels, partly by adequate testimony, partly by their 
superficial characteristics and their relations to one 
another. The contents of a book have an important 
bearing on the question of its authenticity. There are 
books v^hich cannot be believed. There are books 
v^hich, unless they wqtq true, could not have been 
v^ritten. No one could believe the Baron von Mun- 
chausen's narrative of his adventures, though it made 
its first public appearance under his ov^^n highly re- 
spectable name and authority. On the other hand, 
there was probably never a classical scholar so scepti- 
cal as not to give entire credence to Xenophon's 
Anabasis, — a story so coherent, so closely in accord- 
ance with all that is known of its time and scenes from 
other sources, and in portions so journal-like, equally 
in its minuteness and its vividness, that, were the 
book found now for the first time, without the author's 



CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 47 

name, the universal verdict would be that it was per- 
fectly true throughout, and undoubtedly written by 
one who had borne part in some of the principal 
events recorded. The story, unless true, could not 
have been written. 

The object of my present Lecture is to establish this 
same proposition as to our canonical Gospels. They 
could not have been written, had they not been true. 
To test this statement, let us take an inventory of their 
contents. 

The character of Jesus Christ stands out alone, 
whether in fable or in history. Viewed in its human 
aspects, it is entirely unique. There is a blending, a 
harmonizing, of all seeming contrasts of moral excel- 
lence, — of traits, any one of which in equal lustre 
would have immortalized him in whom it shone forth 
among multiplied imperfections and foibles, — magna- 
nimity and humility ; firmness and meekness ; uncom- 
promising justice and unexhausted benevolence ; 
dignity and condescension ; the spirit of command 
and that of the lowliest service ; purity in which the 
most watchful hostility could detect no stain, and 
tenderness for the lowest, vilest types of depravity ; 
a walk with God so close that he seemed ever within 
temple-gates, and yet a walk with man so genial, 
friendly, loving, and helpful, that his eyes and 
thoughts might seem never lifted above the sur- 
rounding world ; a might stern and resolute, such 
as was never witnessed before or since in the conflict 
with evil, and a submission and resignation so serene 
and trustful, so gentle and kindly, as to call forth the 



48 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

admiration and sympathy of men whose Uves had been 
passed in scenes of warfare and carnage. 

This picture is presented under a kaleidoscopic 
diversity of aspects. We see Jesus in every condition 
of Hfe : in moments of triumph, with the hosannas 
of adoring multitudes ; in hours of rude buEeting, 
coarse jeers, and brutal insults, when Jew tosses 
him over with cruel scorn to Gentile mockery, and 
Gentile remands him scourged and lacerated to fresh 
Jewish outrage. We behold him, now at the marriage 
feast ; now by the death-bed, the bier, the grave-side ; 
in the evening with the friends at Bethany, to whom 
his advent is high festival ; on the morrow among those 
who despise his claims and scoff at his teachings ; 
then among disciples who misapprehend his words, 
misconceive his mission, annoy him by their paltry 
rivalries, disturb his serenity by their angry strife ; 
then, again, among those who watch every word and 
gesture that they may find ground of censure and 
accusation ; then among those who look to him for 
temporal benefits, but turn a deaf ear to his counsel 
and admonition. We are admitted even to his retire- 
ment. His heart is laid open to us. We learn that, 
as others by sleep, he by midnight devotion seeks 
strength for the burden of the day ; and through the 
agony of prayer in Gethsemane comes to him the 
peace, the sweetness, the triumph of that awful, 
glorious death-scene on the cross. 

In this entire picture of human virtue, we find no 
situation or incident out of keeping with any other, or 
out of harmony with the relations in which he stood 



RECOGNITION OF CHRIST'S CHARACTER. 49 

to the institutions, life^and men of his time. It is not 
a compilation of excerpts from different lives ; not like 
some of the stories of heroes in prehistoric times, and 
those in the hagiobiography of the early Christian 
ages, the heaping together under one name of anec- 
dotes, events, and traditions, that evidently had at the 
outset various titles. The narrative is homogeneous ; 
its contents belong together. The four Gospels mani- 
festly present different sections — often parallel, and, 
when not so, mutually consistent and of like staple 
— of one and the same life, real or imagined. Even 
were it maintained that the longer discourses in the 
fourth Gospel differ essentially from those in the other 
three ; still the human Jesus of John is precisely the 
same person with that of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 
with not a trace or shade of difference as to the feat- 
ures of character or the style of incident. It is no 
more certain of the several biographers of Washington 
than of the evangelists, that they wrote the life of one 
and the same personage, or, if fictitious, of one and the 
same unreal character, whose fabulous history was 
equally known to them all. 

As to the features of Christ's character, we may 
say, without fear of contradiction, that they have 
commanded the entire approval of persons of every 
age, condition, and culture, and the most cordially, of 
the confessedly greatest, wisest, and best. Whatever 
objections there are to the contents of the Gospels do 
not apply to the character of Jesus as a man. " We 
can find no fault in him," has been the verdict of his 
enemies from Pilate until now. Nor can we detect in 

3 



50 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

him the absence of any virtue or grace which enters 
into our highest ideal of human excellence. 

His, too, is a character whose pre-eminent worth 
wins universal recognition. Though he is a Jew as 
to birth and surroundings, there is no Hebrew or 
Oriental element about him which interferes in the 
least with the appreciation of his moral supremacy by 
nationalities of the opposite stamp. The German, the 
Englishman, the Frenchman, is not constrained to 
make the slightest abatement or allowance in estimat- 
ing his merits. He belongs equally to all ages. He 
has no secular parallax. In the darkest, times he has 
been acknowledged as supremely perfect, and equally 
so at epochs of the highest culture, mental and moral. 
He is transcendently beautiful and glorious to the 
rudest aspirant after goodness ; and no less so to a 
Fenelon, a Martyn, an Oberlin, a Judson. The ignorant 
woman who can hardly spell out his story in her Bible 
can imagine no other being so lovely, so adorable ; and 
he seems no less the highest type of humanity to Mil- 
ton, Newton, Locke, Bunsen, Faraday. In the galaxy 
of the greatly good, he is not a star a little brighter 
than the rest, but a sun in whose light the stars grow 
pale. 

Such is the character which either grew under the 
pens of the evangelists, or was incarnated in the life 
of one of their coevals. The former hypothesis need 
detain us but a moment ; for probably hardly any one 
holds it now. Friendly and hostile critics will agree 
that the evangelists show neither the imagination, the 
culture, nor the capacity of authorship, which would 



THE GOSPELS NOT FICTIONS. 5 1 

have started them on-^he career of fictitious hterature, 
or made their success in it even possible. They evi- 
dently used with no little difficulty the language in 
which they wrote. They exhibit no familiarity with 
any literature except the Hebrew Scriptures. Their 
style is literal, prosaic, unimaginative. The first three 
enter but imperfectly into the beauty and majesty of 
their own picture, — build better than they know, — 
describe a breadth and a tenderness of spirit with 
which, when they write, they have hardly come into 
full sympathy. 

Then, too, the differences among the evangelists as 
to style and material render it certain that they were 
four men, not one man under four names. Now, were 
you to set the four most able and accomphshed writers 
that can be found to write four fictitious stories about 
the same imaginary personage, in such a way that the 
events of the four can be combined into one story, and 
that there shall be nothing in the hero as described by 
either of the four that shall not be in perfect harmony 
with all that is related of him by the other three, it is 
inconceivable that, without more than human genius 
and vigilance, there should not escape here and there, 
from one or another of them, an expression out of 
keeping with the rest. Nay more, the hero himself, 
though intended to be the same, could not pass 
through these four different moulds without some 
variation of form and feature, discernible, if not to 
superficial view, on close inspection. The only 
alternative is that the character described by the 
evangelists actually existed in a person whom they 
all knew. 



52 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Here I am ready to join the company of unbelievers 
in maintaining that, in accordance with the recognized 
laws of human nature and development, such a man 
could not have sprung up and lived in that age and 
people. If you will look through the list of eminently 
good men in all times and nations, you will find, Jesus 
Christ alone excepted, not one who does not bear a 
perceptible relation to his antecedents and surround- 
ings. Other good men have become illustrious by 
transcending by a very little the moral standard of 
their day, by ridding themselves of a few prevalent 
partialities or prejudices, by abjuring the most glaring 
faults of their contemporaries ; in fine, by anticipating 
the next stage of progress. But none of them have 
lost the flavor of their native soil, or obliterated the 
date-mark of their birth. Socrates would not be 
received as an exemplary man anywhere in Christen- 
dom. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus would not satisfy 
a purist of our day. The saints worshipped by the 
Romish Church would, many of them, be excommuni- 
cated were they living now ; and those of them who 
were truly holy men, often from conscientious motives, 
outraged all the decencies of common life. There 
were many things licensed among good men of the 
last century which would be utterly inconsistent with 
respectability, not to say piety, at the present time. 
Praying men commanded slave-ships and privateers. 
Ministers of the Gospel managed lotteries, and har- 
vested their profits for the supposed interests of 
religion. As intelligence advances, even if the world 
does not grow better, Christians see more clearly what 



THE PASSIVE VIRTUES. 53 

they ought to be, and-^ach generation finds deficiencies 
and faults in the standard of all that preceded it. Christ 
alone does not fall under this law. 

Do you say that he had before him the examples of 
the great men of the earlier dispensation, — patriarchs, 
psalmists, seers t I ask in reply. Fall they not into the 
same category with all other worthies of the early 
time.? Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, Elijah, — 
is there one of these whom Jesus can have taken as 
a model for his character.? Moses and Elijah are 
in the record (as I believe they were visibly on the 
mountain of transfiguration) placed side by side with 
him, — grand, glorious men for their times, well worthy 
to be captains in the Lord's host ; but both of them 
men of violence and blood, implacably vindictive 
against the enemies of God, more prompt to curse 
than to bless. The Jewish type of virtue and piety 
was harsh and hard, narrow and exclusive, ungentle 
and stern, at the opposite pole from that of Christ. 
The Hebrews, like the classic nations, had no esteem for 
what we call the passive virtues, — to the whole ancient 
world not virtues, but weaknesses. These virtues had 
not even decent names in the language in which the 
evangelists wrote. The only names which they could 
find for humility meant (like the Latin Jmmilitas) not 
a good quality, but a mean quality, — grovelling abjectly 
on the ground ; and these words, for lack of better, the 
sacred writers had to pick up out of the dust, and to give 
them Christian baptism, to denote a habit of mind 
which in Jesus Christ was for the first time consecrated 
as a duty and a virtue, but which is now a gem second 



54 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

in lustre to none in the kingly diadem with which grate- 
ful generations have crowned him who unearthed it. 

Jesus was, indeed, " a root out of a dry ground." 
He is not to be accounted for by any spiritual Dar- 
winism, by any possible process of development. Do 
what you will with his character, you cannot bring 
him into line with his predecessors, whether Jewish 
or Gentile, or with the culture or standard of his age. 
These eighteen centuries of progress have not brought 
the advanced guard of humanity up to him. We can 
trace the rudiments of other pre-eminent characters, 
and show whence and how they grew. There is no 
human or earthly accounting for him. Yet he must 
have lived ; if not, you have a still more marvellous 
prodigy, — an unprecedented, unequalled, and unac- 
countable creation of transcendent excellence, re- 
peated fourfold in the imaginations of two fishermen, 
a tax-gatherer, and an obscure physician in Galilee. 

But this is not all. There can be no doubt that 
Jesus taught no less than lived. Renan admits that 
the ethical teachings of the Gospels were for the most 
part handed down from his lips. And what are they } 
It is conceded by candid and virtuous unbelievers, it 
is asserted in every form of strong asseveration by 
Renan, that " never man spake like this man." We 
find no pre-arranged system in his words. They were 
suggested by the occasion, the scene, the casual sur- 
roundings, the incident of the moment. Yet when we 
put them together, we find no lacuna, no department 
of duty omitted, no question which the tender con- 
science can ask unanswered. While his Church 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 55 

has made but slow ^^ances in the embodying of his 
precepts, and still falls far short of the fulness of his 
requirements, not one of them has been disallowed or 
outgrown or transcended ; nor has the keenest or the 
most malevolent criticism detected fault or flaw in the 
morality that flowed in his words and was incarnated 
in his life. 

Here, again, we find him alone and unapproached. 
Socrates, Plato, Zeno, Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca, have 
been outgrown. Socrates gave a broad license in 
some portions of the moral code, and virtually sanc- 
tioned by acquiescence tantamount to approval, if not 
in his own practice, some of the worst vices of his age. 
In Plato's morals, with much that is pure and noble, 
there are some of the worst maxims that disgrace the 
phalanstery. The Stoics were in certain respects 
almost Christian ; but their philosophy gave scant 
honor to the gentler virtues, and recommended sui- 
cide as the wise man's avenue of relief from defeat, 
disappointment, incurable disease, and the infirmities 
of old age. The Hebrew morality, divine so far as it 
went, yet imperfect, needed at every point the " filling 
out," which neither sage nor prophet had conceived, 
but which Jesus gave at the very beginning of his 
ministry. His movement among the virtues was no 
less than revolutionary. The mountains were laid 
low ; the valleys exalted. The first were made last ; 
the last first. And the moral judgment of the Chris- 
tian centuries has, point for point, sustained his deci- 
sions. That such a teacher, remote from all the great 
centres of intelligence, destitute even of such instruc- 



56 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

tion as the rabbles of his nation might have given him, 
should have been nurtured and developed, by the might 
of his own genius, in that poor, starveling village in a 
despised corner of Palestine, is simply impossible. 
Yet that there was one such, if not four, is an his- 
torical fact as fully authenticated as is the fact that 
Augustus Caesar was the Roman Emperor at the 
reputed era of his birth. 

Yet more. There were other than ethical teachings. 
No one doubts that Jesus proclaimed the fatherhood of 
God as it had never been conceived before ; that he 
declared the doctrine of a full and righteous retribution 
for the good and evil of men's lives, — a retribution 
reaching out into the depths of eternity ; that he pre- 
sented the divine clemency and forgiveness for re- 
pented sin, as to which there had been previously no 
clear assurance, and which had been tentatively, often 
despairingly, sought by bloody sacrifices, nay, by hor- 
rible self-torture, and, even in highly civilized commu- 
nities, by the immolation of human victims, in lieu of 
all which he prospectively announced his own impend- 
ing sacrifice on the cross as fully and for ever sufficient. 
Toward the last of these great truths, there had been 
in the later Hebrew prophets a certain negative ten- 
dency in the comparatively low esteem in which they 
regarded sacrifice ; but even from this tendency the 
nation had retroceded into the merest ritualism. 
Immortality, dimly taught, if at all, in the Hebrew 
Scriptures, denied by the Sadducees, travestied by the 
Pharisees, had nowhere, either on Jewish or Gentile 
soil, been so received as to furnish motives for the 



THE DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY. 57 

government of the eaftkly life, comfort under its griefs, 
or a confident onlooking beyond its confines. As for 
the divine nature, its paternal aspect toward the indi- 
vidual worshipper or the Jewish people is recognized 
but sparingly, toward others than Hebrews in not a 
single undoubted instance, in their national Scriptures. 
Yet, without any intermediate stage of development, 
these truths come from Jesus Christ, clear, round, and 
full, so that there are no statements of them in human 
language so explicit and satisfying as his ; and, what 
is more, they take their start from him as motive 
powers of the intensest momentum and efficacy. 
The divine fatherhood, through his ministry extended 
to Canaanite and Samaritan, in John and Paul fruc- 
tified into a universal brotherhood, which has been 
the soul of Christian propagandism and philanthropy 
until now. Immortality, from a vague conjecture, 
exhaled when most needed, through hijn became a 
conviction immovable as the consciousness of self- 
hood, with unexhausted energizing power both for 
brave endurance and for virtuous action. From him, 
too, the divine forgiveness — with precisely the agency 
which was first attributed, not by those who came after 
him, but by himself prophetically, to his own death — 
grew at once into a regenerating force, by faith in itself 
creating its own subjects in a line of succession which, 
commencing on the first Pentecost after his crucifixion, 
promises to last as long as sin shall endure. These 
revolutionary doctrines were enunciated, established, 
put into action by one who in training, position, and 
external advantages, possessed no prestige whatever, — • 



58 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE, 

by one who was unlikely to be either highly intelligent 
or peculiarly spiritual, and still less likely to obtain 
extended or lasting influence. 

There are some facts of a more comprehensive 
scope that belong essentially with the specific con- 
siderations which I have stated. Jesus Christ, whose 
actual existence, as I have shown, alone can account 
for the existence of the Gospels, was in every human 
point of view by far the most remarkable man of any 
age or race. Who else is there whose birth civilized 
man would ever have consented, or could without 
patent absurdity have proposed, to assume as an era 
from which to date our years .-* Yet this seems un- 
natural to no one ; for his birth marks the intrusion 
among pre-existing forces of a force which, whether 
human or divine, has proved greater than all the rest. 
It has furnished the characteristic elements of West- 
ern as distinguished from Oriental civilization. It has 
so underlain every improvement in sociology, public 
policy, international law, nay, even commerce and 
finance, that when professedly new maxims in these 
departments have been promulgated, adopted, estab- 
lished, it is always found that they are corollaries from 
principles which Jesus proclaimed, and may be re- 
translated, and for the better, into the very words that 
fell from his lips. The paramount efficiency of this 
force is owned by its enemies no less than by its 
friends. No other cause enlists so devoted cham- 
pions ; none other awakens so intense antagonism. It 
is a stone of stumbling ever in the way of those who 
will not build upon it. 



THE HUMAN AND DIVINE IN CHRIST. 59 

Proved, but impFobable ; certain, yet incredible ; 
historical verity, still none the less an impossibility, 

— is this human life of Jesus taken alone. Had we 
this, and no more, we should have ample exterior 
evidence for the story, yet should be utterly unable 
to account for it. But the evangelists do not leave 
these marvels unaccounted for. According to them, 
Jesus bears a unique relation to the Supreme Being, — 
a sonship more intimate, more entirely consubstantial 

— if you will tolerate a word from the old theology — 
than belongs to any other being in the universe. He 
is the image, in human form, of the omnipresent and 
eternal God. It is his special mission, living and 
dying, to manifest all of the divine that can admit of 
manifestation. This mission is reported, not on the 
mere evidence of his assertions, but as attested by the 
exercise of such supernatural powers as put the seal 
of God upon him and upon his utterances. Disease 
flees at his touch. The maniac grows sane under his 
eye. He walks on the lake as by its shore. The bier 
and the grave yield up their dead at his summons. 
Chief of all, — barely to name a subject to which a 
Lecture of this course will be devoted, — he rises 
from his own sepulchre, and reappears repeatedly to 
those who had seen him dying, dead, and entombed. 

If all this be true, there remains no difficulty in ac- 
counting for the character, the teachings, the extended 
and enduring influence of Jesus Christ. The divine 
and the human side of his person, character, and 
history, are in entire harmony, and cannot be severed 
in thought. The human presupposes the divine as 



6o CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

its only solution ; the divine could have had no in- 
ferior human manifestation. They are inseparable in 
the record. The life of Jesus in the Gospels is not a 
human life, with strange and supernatural incidents in- 
terspersed here and there. In this respect it differs 
entirely from numerous biographies of personages in 
Greek and Roman history, and of saints in the Christian 
calendar. Their stories contain supernatural events ; 
but you can cut them out from the record, and there 
will remain a perfectly coherent and credible biog- 
raphy. The lives of St. Francis de Sales and St. 
Elisabeth of Thuringia, for instance, may, with an 
occasional omission, be made holy and beneficent lives, 
such as those saints undoubtedly led. But no such 
process can be performed with the life of Jesus. The 
divine is inextricably blended with the human. It 
forms part of the warp and woof of the whole story. 
You can no more expunge the supernatural and leave 
a coherent narrative, than you can cut out some of the 
figures of a piece of tapestry and leave a fabric that 
shall retain aught of comeliness and beauty. Some- 
times it is the divine that forms the canvas for the 
manifestation of human perfections ; sometimes it is 
in human actions, relations, and sympathies, that the 
divine shines forth with pre-eminent radiance and 
majesty. His beneficence is the most strikingly 
displayed in his miracles ; his gentleness and con- 
descension are brought out into the strongest rehef 
by them. There are few of his discourses that do not 
refer to them. Indeed, his whole style of address 
betrays the consciousness of a mission far above that 



JESUS PROFESSES MIRACULOUS POWER. 6 1 

of the prophets whojiad gone before him. Some of 
them were men of lofty bearing ; they stood undaunted 
before kings and multitudes, bent not to godless power, 
and defied the rage and insults of the people. Yet 
who among them ever dared to speak in his own 
name ? " Thus saith the Lord," is always the prefix 
and the refrain of their counsel, rebuke, and denunci- 
ation. Nor was it in their own names, but on the 
authority of the sacred books, and of honored names 
of rabbles of preceding generations, that the scribes 
of Christ's time gave their utterances. But he, the 
most modest and humble of the sons of men, never 
appeals to prescription. He speaks as one who has 
first-hand authority, — a right to be believed and 
obeyed. " Ye have heard that it hath been said by 
them of old time ; but I say unto you." He con- 
stantly refers to his works as the credentials of his 
mission. Pare away his words as you may, reject the 
fourth Gospel, and retain the mere skeleton of the 
synoptics, you yet cannot eliminate the tokens of a 
higher than mere human self -consciousness, — of the 
possession of such powers as mere mortal man never 
wielded upon earth. 

That Jesus suffered it to be believed that he pos- 
sessed such powers, that his habitual speech on all oc- 
casions implied this, is an historical fact no less certain 
than are the universally admitted events of his earthly 
life. Renan, indeed, concedes this, and attempts to 
apologize for it, sometimes on the ground that Jesus 
believed pious fraud essential to his success ; some- 
times on the ground that his enthusiasm and the 



62 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

flattery of his followers, together with some remark- 
able, yet easily accountable instances of his power 
over the imagination of diseased persons in his 
presence, deluded him into a false belief in his own 
supernatural powers. We cannot hang at the same 
time on both the horns of this dilemma ; but they may 
be tested separately. 

Did Jesus pretend to supernatural powers without 
the consciousness of possessing them } For what 
purpose? For the establishment, Renan says, of 
the purest, loftiest morality that man ever taught, — 
for the building up of a kingdom of righteousness 
which shall last as long as the world lasts. This 
may be a French mode of producing such a result, 
but a mode utterly inconceivable to the Anglo-Saxon 
mind. If, either as principal or accomplice, he lent 
himself to such a work, he strips himself of every title 
to our reverence. But if any thing is certain about 
him, it is that he inculcated and practised the severest 
virtue, and especially that he held in holy scorn and 
horror every kind of pretence and deception. What 
was the burden of his charge against the Scribes and 
Pharisees t Not that they were openly and scandal- 
ously wicked : they were the farthest possible from 
being so ; and he always treated with peculiar gentle- 
ness and tenderness those who before the world bore 
the stigma of shameful depravity, if they were only 
honest enough to confess it. It was as hypocrites, 
as pretending to be what they were not, that he de- 
nounced those who sat in Moses' seat ; and in these 
invectives there is every mark of scathing moral 



JESUS NOT SELF-DELUDED. 6^^ 

indignation. It is jnanifest that, from the depths of 
his soul, he had the profoundest abhorrence for aught 
that was not honest, open, sincere, true. 

Try we now the other alternative. " He was self- 
deluded." But his strength of character is no less 
manifest than his purity. We see him controlling 
both friendly and hostile multitudes by the mere 
power of his presence. Majesty and meekness sit 
together on his brow and mien and spirit. His 
serenity and evenness of temper show him to have 
been incapable of those waywardnesses and weak- 
nesses which are wont to issue in delusive self- 
exaltation ; while, had his self -exaltation been imagi- 
nary, it would have tinged all the currents of thought 
and feeling. But his lowliness of life and spirit 
remained to the last as simple and genuine as when 
he first left his mother's home. Then, too, had any 
unreal fancy been possible for him, there was one 
which would of necessity have taken fast hold upon 
him so soon as he had acquired influence and a fol- 
lowing. His people, writhing and smarting under a 
Gentile yoke, and encouraged by misunderstood inti- 
mations of the prophets (which, we believe, really 
pointed to such a Messiah as Jesus of Nazareth), 
were looking for the advent of a Messiah who should 
be warrior, king, and conqueror, and raise them from 
beneath the heel above the throne of the Caesars. The 
popular expectation early seized upon Jesus : he was 
vehemently urged to assume this heroic part ; and had 
there been any weak place in his character, along with 
his extraordinary gifts, it would have been impossible 



64 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

for him not to yield to this pressure, borne in upon 
him, as it was, not only from a waiting nation, but 
from untold generations in the past. 

We cannot, then, regard him as either deceiver or 
deceived. His, therefore, was a life which to those 
conversant with him presented a double aspect, — 
human excellencies and endowments which indicated 
a unique nearness to and union with the Supreme 
Being. Two of the evangelists were his apostles ; 
we have abundant reason for believing that the other 
two were his disciples. I have given you what seems 
to me satisfactory evidence that these men really wrote 
the Gospels. Yet those who know all that it was ever 
possible for God to do, and are therefore sure that 
miracles can never have been wrought, and that a 
being superior to themselves can never have trodden 
the earth, set off the alleged absurdity of this unreal 
conception of a being both the Son of God and the 
Son of man, against the evidence of the early compo- 
sition of the Gospels. They maintain that, however 
strong the grounds for believing these books to have 
been written by their reputed authors, the conception 
which they embody must have demanded more than 
one generation for its development from the best and 
noblest life that can ever have been lived upon the 
earth. We have, however, independent proof that 
this conception had reached its full dimensions long 
before we suppose the fourth Gospel to have been 
written, and as early as the earliest of the synoptic 
Gospels. Eusebius tells us that the authorship by 
St. Paul of thirteen epistles ascribed to him in our 



PAUL'S CONCEPTION OF CHRIST. 65 

canon of Scripture had-^never been called in question ; 
almost all sceptical critics admit the genuineness of 
ten out of the thirteen ; Baur and the Tubingen 
critics regard four of them as having been undoubt- 
edly written by Paul. These four are those to the 
Romans, the Corinthians, and the Galatians. Neither 
of these can have been written later than a.d. 58, The 
Messianic conception, as attached to Jesus, had cer- 
tainly reached its full growth when they were written. 
Even the fourth Gospel contains no more highly 
colored picture of the human perfection and the 
divine sonship of Christ than Paul recognizes in 
almt)st every chapter of these epistles. Let me 
quote a few passages. " His Son Jesus Christ our 
Lord, which was made of the seed of David according 
to the flesh ; and declared to be the Son of God with 
power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resur- 
rection from the dead." " The light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." " We 
must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." 
" Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became 
poor." " When the fulness of the time was come, 
God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made 
under the law, to redeem them that were under the 
law." " If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching 
vain, and your faith is also vain." " Put ye on the 
Lord Jesus." "• To this end Christ both died, and 
rose, and revived,* that he might be Lord both of the 
dead and living." In the epistle to the Galatians, St. 

* " Died and lived," according to the more correct reading. 



66 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Paul describes his conferences with Peter and James, 
from which it appears that as to every thing apper- 
taining directly to Christ he believed precisely what 
they believed, and that the only question between 
him and them related to the obligation of the Gentile 
converts to conform to the Jewish law. It is evident, 
beyond the shadow of a doubt, then, that thus early, 
and among those who had been familiarly acquainted 
with Christ during his lifetime on earth, there existed 
the very same belief concerning his person and char- 
acter, which we find drawn out in detail in the Gospels. 
Thus, there is no reason whatever why the Gospels 
could not have been written at the time when they 
purport to have been written, and by the men whose 
names they bear. 

With reference to the supernatural portion of the 
Gospel record, it is worthy of note that we see no 
proof of its ever having been called in question during 
the early centuries, even by the enemies of Christian- 
ity. Some of my hearers know what a demurrer is 
in legal proceedings. It is a plea in which an oppos- 
ing counsel admits the facts alleged by his adversary, 
but denies their relevancy, — maintains that they prove 
nothing to the point. Now the earliest arguments 
against the divine authority of Christ were demurrers. 
Such was the statement recorded by the evangelists, 
" He casteth out demons through Beelzebub, the chief 
of the demons." Such was that of the council assem- 
bled after the raising of Lazarus, " This man doeth 
many miracles ; if we let him thus alone, all men will 
believe on him." Celsus and Porphyry, it appears 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN EVIDENCE. 67 

from the portions of-tiieir works still preserved, ad- 
mitted the supernatural facts of the Gospel record, 
but ascribed them to necromancy. This was the 
favorite, and, I believe, the sole theory of Jewish 
teachers and writers for many centuries, vestiges of 
it having lingered in the synagogue as late as the 
epoch of the Protestant Reformation. Now this de- 
murrer is, of course, valid only with one who can 
adopt the theory of the party that makes the plea. 
It gives very strong additional attestation to the facts 
admitted in common by both friends and enemies. 
It proves that the persuasion was early seated, and 
transmitted from primitive times, that Jesus Christ 
performed works like those which he said proceeded 
from the Father, and as to which none in our time 
who believe them to have been wrought can doubt 
whence they came.* 

I have in this Lecture sought to present the charac- 
ter of Christ as portrayed in the Gospels, as the high- 
est possible evidence of their authenticity. It is a 
character which, without an original, could not have 
been conceived by the evangelists ; one for which 
they had neither the materials within their reach, nor 
the genius or culture requisite for its invention. As 
an actual character, it could not by any possibility 
have been formed by antecedent or surrounding 
influences. It was not a natural development ; for 
human virtue has not yet developed up to its stand- 
ard. Its human side cannot possibly be authentic, 
unless its divine side be equally authentic. The 

* See Appendix, note E. 



6S CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE, 

philosophy of our day insists on our receiving only 
proved facts, and the causes necessarily implied in 
those facts. We accede to this postulate. We claim 
only the unquestionable fact that, eighteen hundred 
and fifty years ago, there lived a man who left an 
indelible impress on all subsequent ages, who inaugu- 
rated a revolution in humanity, who started anew the 
current of the world's history, and of whose moral per- 
fectness the best since his day have deemed themselves 
but far-off imitators. If our theory be disallowed, the 
burden of proof rests on those who reject it. Let 
them show the fountain of his purity in the turbid 
waters of Judaism or heathenism, or in the highest 
culture and the best philosophy of his times. Let 
them demonstrate the sources of his power. Let 
them reveal to us the secret by which the emblem 
of his ignominy became the symbol of all that is great, 
glorious, and excellent, and the crucified felon grew 
into the King of kings and Lord of lords. Till they 
can do this, we will be content with the loyal apostle's 
confession, " We believe and are sure that thou art 
that Christ, the Son of the living God." 



LECTURE IV. 

MUTUAL RESEMBLANCE OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. — THEIR 
SAMENESS OF STYLE AND LANGUAGE ACCOUNTED FOR. — 
GENEALOGIES IN MATTHEW'S AND LUKE'S GOSPELS. — 
PROOFS OF THE GENUINENESS OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. — ITS 
RELATION TO THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. — PROOF OF ITS 
ANTIQUITY FROiM THE HISTORY OF GNOSTICISM. 

T HAVE presented in previous Lectures the grounds 
-^ on which we may affirm the genuineness and 
authenticity of our canonical Gospels. But I have 
confined myself to considerations common to the 
four. There are, however, certain special objec- 
tions urged against the authorship of the first three 
Gospels in their present form in the Apostolic age, 
and against their editorship by any person of first- 
hand authority; and there are objections — which 
demand our most careful examination — to the author- 
ship of the fourth Gospel by John or in his lifetime. 
We will consider, first, the questions that relate to 
the synoptic Gospels. 

These Gospels coincide with one another in the 
main, not only as to their contents, but often in lan- 
guage. There frequently occur long passages which 
are the same, almost word for word, in the three, or in 
two of the three. There are many passages in hear- 
ing which it would be impossible for one familiar with 



70 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

the Scriptures to say from which of the three it was 
taken. A common origin or free copying from one 
another, it is said, alone can account for these phe- 
nomena ; and, on either supposition, these Gospels are 
in no sense three separate, independent, and original 
authorities. Even though the names of the authors 
be correctly given, still if two of them needed to copy 
from the other — Mark and Luke from Matthew — we 
have no ground for the assurance that those two had 
personal knowledge of the facts they recorded ; or if 
they all copied from older documents, then are they 
all alike unworthy of our implicit confidence. 

That they did not copy from one another appears, 
as I have already said, from the no inconsiderable 
amount of material of the highest interest peculiar to 
each, which it is inconceivable that the others, with 
his record before them, should not have borrowed. 
This is emphatically the case as to the Gospels of 
Matthew and Luke ; it is also the case with Mark's 
Gospel as compared with Matthew's or Luke's alone, 
though it contains little that may not be found sub- 
stantially in one of the other two. 

The hypothesis more generally entertained is that 
these Gospels, as they now exist, did not originally 
proceed from individual authors ; that they were 
formed by successive accretions, the nucleus of all 
three having been a collection of the discourses and 
parables of Christ with some connecting thread of 
narrative, to which additions were made by different 
hands, in part from documents of which we see traces 
in two of the three, in part from tradition. Matthew, 



THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS NOT FRAGMENTARY. 7 1 

Mark, and Luke may-o^may not have had something 
to do with the first crude germs of the Gospels bear- 
ing their names : but in their present form they were 
not written or made ; they grew, and are composed of 
materials of different dates and sources, and of widely 
varying degrees of authority. 

The first comment that suggests itself as to this 
hypothesis is, that the books themselves do not cor- 
respond to it. They have not the appearance of being 
made up of fragments, nor do they show the slightest 
traces of having been written, either of them, by more 
than one author. Each of them has its own peculiar- 
ities of style, its own modes of quotation from the 
Hebrew Scriptures, its own distinguishing words and 
phrases, its own marks of a specific use, purpose, or 
destination. Each is a complete work by itself, with 
no breaks or abrupt transitions, with no tokens of the 
intrusion of heterogeneous materials here and there. 
Such materials, if they existed, would be as easily 
recognized as are boulders from a distant locality 
among the native rocks on which they lie. These 
boulders, though borne to their present site on glac- 
iers that were broken up before man trod the earth, 
still show themselves out of place, and will so show 
themselves till the end of time. We have no such 
boulder in either of the first three Gospels ; but we 
have one lying loose in our common editions of the 
Gospel of John, and I regard it as of so pre-eminent 
value in refutation of any patchwork theory as to the 
composition of the synoptic Gospels, as to be worth 
our special consideration. 



72 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

I refer to the narrative of the woman taken in 
adultery,* which no respectable critic supposes to 
belong by birthright where it stands. It not only 
has no connection with what precedes and follows 
it, and makes what follows it self-contradictory and 
absurd, but, when we leave it out, the preceding and 
following sentences run together at once, and show 
that they belong to the same continuous narrative. 
Short as it is, it contains several features of style 
unlike John's, and two designations — one of a place, 
one of persons — which John never uses, though very 
often speaking of the same place and persons. What 
is of still higher importance, it is the only story in the 
four Gospels that is in any degree repugnant to the 
moral sense which they have educated, and out of 
keeping with their general tone and spirit ; the only 
passage which many who hold the highest views of 
inspiration would willingly and gladly see expunged 
from the sacred pages : for it alone gives a one-sided 
view of the character of Christ, representing pity for 
the sinner as almost lapsing into indulgence for the 
sin. This passage, with almost every possible mark 
of spuriousness on its face, is wanting in the four 
oldest Greek manuscripts, and in most of the oldest 
extant manuscripts of the early versions. Such manu- 
scripts as contain it generally have it written in the 
margin, or, when inserted in the text, m^arked with an 
asterisk or an obelisk. Nor does it always occupy the 
same place, but is sometimes put as an appendix at 
the end of the fourth Gospel, and sometimes inserted, 
* John vii. 53 — viii. 11. See Appendix, note F. 



THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS HOMOGENEOUS. 73 

where it is equally^ut of place, near the end of Luke's 
Gospel. Thus there is not the slightest probability 
that it formed a part of John's Gospel at the outset, 
or was at first intended to be read as a portion of it. 
It was perhaps a garbled reminiscence of some story- 
told by St. John, or perhaps a tradition, without any 
special authority, which some possessor of a copy of 
John's Gospel wrote in the margin of his copy, where 
he could find room to insert it. A copyist of this copy 
transcribed it in the same place, thinking that there 
was some good reason why it should be there. Thus 
it passed from copy to copy, till at length it was 
taken into the text as a passage that might have 
been omitted by mistake, but then not without a 
mark to indicate a doubt whether it belonged there 
or not. 

I have introduced this passage as of the highest 
importance in the question now under discussion. It 
shows how utterly impossible it is so to incorporate 
alien materials that they shall seem of the same fabric 
with the work into which they are inserted. Yet, on 
the supposition of the gradual growth of the first 
three Gospels from a common original document, this 
process must have been performed many times over 
by the hands of many different authors, without leav- 
ing the slightest trace of displacements, rough edges, 
or awkward joinings, where new fragments were in- 
serted, — without any tokens of diversity of style or 
inconsistency of representation. The existing marks 
of homogeneousness in diction and sentiment, of the 
continuous work of a single hand, in each of these 

4 



74 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Gospels, could not by any possibility have been coun- 
terfeited. 

Yet the coincidences of which I have spoken are 
so close and so peculiar a feature of these books, that 
those who call their genuineness in question have a 
right to claim an explanation of them. On examina- 
tion we find, in the first place, that the coincidence, 
close as it is, is such as would result from common 
recollections rather than from the same manuscript. 
There are, in every instance, slight verbal variations, 
such as would undoubtedly be observable were any 
three of us to repeat from memory the parable of the 
talents, or that of the prodigal son. The coincidence 
is closer in the discourses and sayings of Jesus than 
in the mere narrative, as if each of the three had been 
at special pains to give a correct report of what the 
Master had said. The coincidence is most frequent 
and continuous between Mark and Luke, who often 
agree in deviating from Matthew, alike in the report 
of words, in the details of events, and in the order in 
which they occurred. 

As for their agreement in reporting the discourses 
and parables of Jesus, it was but natural that each 
should have made it his prime endeavor not only to 
put into writing the substance of what was said, but 
to reproduce, so far as they could be rendered into 
another language, the very words that had been 
uttered. And is it not conceivable that Jesus pur- 
posely prepared the way for reports thus minutely 
literal.'* We have but little of what he said trans- 
mitted to us, and probably this little, embodying as it 



ORAL GOSPEL. 75 

does the fundamental truths and laws of religion and 
ethics, was repeated more than once by Jesus in sub- 
stantially the same forms, so as to penetrate by reitera- 
tion the somewhat slow and hard minds of the hearers, 
and to make an indeUble impression on their memory. 
For nearly three years, at the least, after the depart- 
ure of Jesus, the apostles and their most intimate 
friends remained together at Jerusalem. They met 
almost daily at one another's houses, for conference 
as to the great interests devolved upon them by their 
Master, and for such propagandism as was invited by 
the curiosity of the inhabitants or of strangers in the 
city. Their chief employment at these meetings 
must have been to refresh their own recollections, and 
to instruct those who met with them, by rehearsing 
what Jesus had said and done. Except as to the last 
scenes of his life, in which their tender and intense 
interest could never have waned, their discourse would 
have dwelt chiefly on his ministry in Galilee ; for 
they must have always or often had those present who 
had seen and heard Jesus in Jerusalem, but not in 
Galilee, and much of what had taken place with Jesus 
or had been said by him at Jerusalem, prior to his last 
passover, may have been on visits in which he was 
accompanied by none or by only one of the apostles. 
It must have been a foremost aim with them to recall 
the very words that had fallen from their Master's 
lips, and they would have helped one another's memo- 
ries toward this end, so that when they came to 
repeat his discourses separately, their verbal diver- 
sities would have been few and slight. Then, too, 



76 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

though without any special painstaking, they would 
have fallen into very much the same way of relating 
the incidents of their Master's life ; for while persons 
of taste and culture have each his own method of tell- 
ing the same story, you must, I think, have noticed 
the strong tendency among comparatively uncultivated 
persons, in telling a story, to copy one another's pre- 
cise form and style of narrative. There would thus 
have grown up among the disciples, before they 
began to be scattered, an oral Gospel common to them 
all, the chief staple of their preaching when they were 
dispersed, and to our three evangelists, especially to 
Mark and Luke, the germ of their written Gospels. 

Mark, we know, must have been intimate with this 
company of disciples ; and, even were he not so, Peter, 
whose amanuensis Mark is believed to have been, 
held the first place among the authors of this oral 
Gospel, nor is there any thing in Mark's Gospel which 
we cannot easily conceive of his having learned from 
Peter. 

Matthew, as one of the original twelve, had the 
best first-hand opportunities of information, so that he 
would have been likely to possess some materials 
peculiarly his own ; and as he was, so far as we know, 
the only one of the twelve who^e business would have 
led him to the ready handling of writing materials, it 
is by no means improbable that he used memoranda 
taken from time to time, which would have been sub- 
stantially, and often verbally, in accordance with the 
oral Gospel which he helped to make, yet would have 
covered wider ground. 



» 



THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS ACCOUNTED FOR. 77 

Luke alone relates the mission of the seventy, and 
he gives a series of parables not recorded elsewhere. 
If he was one of the seventy, this may be accounted for ; 
for it would appear from his narrative that the mis- 
sion of the seventy took place, and that these parables 
were uttered after their return, while the twelve were 
absent on their mission. Luke's introductory chap- 
ters are peculiar to him ; there is no sufficient critical 
ground for supposing them not to have formed a part 
of the Gospel as first written ; and we may account 
for these details of the infancy and childhood of Jesus 
by the author's intimacy with Cleopas, a near kinsman 
of the mother of Jesus, — an intimacy proved by the 
narrative of the walk to Emmaus ; for if Luke was 
not — as I believe he was — the actual companion of 
Cleopas on that occasion, it is evident that he heard 
the story from one who was present, and, if so, cer- 
tainly from the one whom he expressly names. 

We thus see that the coincidences and the differ- 
ences of the first three Gospels are precisely such as 
may be accounted for by recorded and admitted facts 
with reference to their reputed authors. In our time, 
or in any time, three persons who had spent two or 
three years in daily intercourse, talking over the same 
portions of their common experience, would, in record- 
ing that experience, coincide with one another fully as 
much and as often as Matthew, Mark, and Luke coin- 
cide, while each would show somewhat of his own 
peculiar individuality, and each would probably have 
some things to tell which the others had not known 
or did not recollect when writing. 



78 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

There is one discrepancy, striking and peculiarly 
open to cavil, between Matthew and Luke, which 
merits our special consideration. I refer to that 
between their genealogies of Joseph, the reputed 
father of Jesus. In Matthew's Gospel, Joseph is the 
son of Jacob ; in Luke's, the son of Heli ; and there 
are numerous other differences between the two lines 
by which the ancestry of Joseph is traced back to 
David. The first thing to be said with reference to 
these genealogies is that it is inconceivable that either 
of them should be a forgery. A genealogy is the most 
unlikely of all things to be forged by simple, unimagi- 
native writers such as Matthew and Luke, if they 
wrote these Gospels, evidently were. Nor yet does 
the mythical theory or any theory of gradual elabora- 
tion account for their existence. They must both 
have been copied from actual documents, and from 
documents supposed to be genuine. 

In the next place, as descent from David, at a time 
when the Messiah was expected from among his pos- 
terity, must have been a dearly cherished prerogative, 
if there were two ways in which such descent could be 
reckoned, tables conformed to both modes would have 
probably been in the possession of members of the 
family. That there were two such modes among the 
Hebrews is rendered certain by the levirate law, ac- 
cording to which, if an elder married brother died 
childless, the next brother married his widow, and 
the first child of the marriage was accounted as the 
son of the deceased brother. That this custom, if it 
no longer had the force of an imperative law, was not 



GENUINENESS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 79 

obsolete, may be inferred from the case of the seven 
brethren propounded to Jesus by the Sadducees. Now, 
if we suppose Jacob the actual father of Joseph, and 
Heli Jacob's elder brother by the same mother, but by 
a different father, we have the discrepancy fully ex- 
plained. Even without pressing this explanation, we 
can conceive that there were among the Jews, as we 
know there were among both the Greeks and the 
Romans, other modes of legal adoption, by which a 
man might be in the eye of the law the son of a per- 
son other than his actual father. The phraseology of 
the two genealogies not only admits, but, rightly under- 
stood, necessitates the supposition of an actual descent 
in the one case, a legal descent in the other. Matthew 
evidently means to give the actual descent. Luke 
expressly designates his as the legal genealogy, and 
why should he have so designated it, unless he was 
aware that it diverged from the line of actual descent ? 
The words, awkwardly rendered in our translation 
** being, as was siij\posed,^ the son of Joseph, which 
was the son of Heli," literally mean " being, as he was 
legally reckoned, the son of Joseph, which was the son 
of Heli." Had this obvious and unquestionable mean- 
ing of the mistranslated word been taken into the 
account, much needless questioning and hypothesis 
might have been spared. 

We will now give our attention to the peculiar 
objections urged against the genuineness of the (so- 
called) Gospel of John. It is alleged that the con- 
ception of Jesus in the fourth Gospel differs radically 

♦'Qf kvofili^eTO. 



8o CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

from that of the other evangelists ; that this Gospel 
belongs, as regards its Messianic features, to a later 
age ; and that it bears indubitable traces of opinions 
that cannot have attained shape and currency in the 
lifetime of the apostles. 

I would remind you, in the first place, that the evi- 
dence of the antiquity of the fourth Gospel from the 
testimony of the early Christian writers is at least 
equal to that in behalf of the other three, and in one 
respect even superior ; for the accounts which Irenaeus 
gives of Polycarp's intercourse with John enhance very 
essentially the weight and authority of his full and un- 
doubted recognition of the fourth Gospel as John's. 

Here it is pertinent to ask. If John did not write this 
Gospel, who could have written it t Except the last 
two verses, — which were professedly and manifestly 
by another hand, probably by loving disciples, through 
whose agency, in his extreme old age or after his death, 
the book was put into circulation, — it bears through- 
out the tokens of a single author : the same style ; the 
same habitual words and phrases ; the same, often 
peculiar, designations for the same persons, places, 
and objects. The internal evidence on this point is 
so clear and strong that, among all the theories with 
regard to the fourth Gospel, that of its composition 
by two or more authors has seldom been maintained. 

This Gospel is the most remarkable book in the 
world. Whether it be fiction or fact, there is in all 
human literature no narrative which so blends majesty 
and tenderness, sublimity and pathos, as that of the 
raising of Lazarus. The discourses ascribed to Jesus 



INTERIORNESS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 8 1 

in controversy witWiis Jewish adversaries manifest as 
much dialectic skill as moral energy, and are on a 
level, both in their intellectual and their spiritual 
aspects, with the highest Messianic conceptions of 
the Christian Church. The communings and inter- 
cessions at the paschal table are an unexhausted 
treasury of holy thought and heavenward aspiration, 
the loss of which would bereave Christendom more 
sorely than the extinction of all that has been written 
in a similar vein for the last seventeen centuries, and 
especially would rob the dying and those who survive 
them in sorrow of peace, consolation, and hope, which 
not even the glowing words of hallowed genius and 
poetry to which they have given tone and spirit could 
begin to replace. Even in the working up of materials 
common to the four, there is, if you will pardon the 
word for the thought, an interiorness, a vividness of 
realization, not manifested by the synoptics ; in fine, 
that closest approach of biography to autobiography, 
which occurs only when the biographer and his sub- 
ject are associated by a spiritual twinship, in which 
the author of the fourth Gospel may be contrasted 
rather than compared with the other evangelists. As 
a single instance out of several that might be selected, 
I will refer you to the narratives of our Saviour's res- 
urrection. Though this event can never be forgotten 
in the last offices of piety over the mortal form of one 
who has fallen asleep in Jesus, it seems more natural 
and appropriate to read on such an occasion from Paul's 
glorious chapter on the resurrection than from the ac- 
count given of that event by either of the synoptics, 

4* 



82 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

who describe the fact as careful historiographers and 
devout and grateful recipients of the blessedness with 
which it is fraught, yet rather as those who are fully 
persuaded of it than as conscious partakers in it. But 
the spirit of the risen Jesus so throbs in every trait of 
the successive acts of that sublime drama as portrayed 
in the fourth Gospel, that the sacred volume contains 
no words more congenial than the very words of that 
narrative, with the moment when kindred are gathered 
for the last time around the lifeless body from which 
the soul has passed on to its Redeemer. 

The fourth Gospel has had more influence upon the 
civilized world than any and all other books. Paul, 
indeed, by the obscurity, for the most part needless, 
which has been suffered to hang over his epistles, has 
led to a larger amount of speculation, often worthless, 
— of system-building, often with the " wood, hay, and 
stubble," of which he speaks contemptuously. But 
in the nurture of purity, sanctity, and loftiness of 
thought, soul, and life ; in the unifying of the heart 
of Christendom through and with the heart of Christ ; 
in the creation of the men in whom the beauty of 
holiness glows with a radiance which distance cannot 
dim or the lapse of years obscure ; in the inspiration of 
the most beneficently influential Christian literature, 
and especially of those sacred lyrics which have been 
at once vehicle and nurse of the highest devotion of 
all the Christian ages, — the Gospel of John (so-called) 
has held the foremost place, to such a degree that its 
suppression, while it would still have left more of 
spiritual worth and power in Christ and his Gospel 



PRE-EMINENCE OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. ^2> 

than in the whole-world beside, would have circum- 
scribed and attenuated the growth and working force 
of Christianity, and have robbed the Church of a very 
large proportion of its beauty, grandeur, and glory. 
There is, indeed, a low naturalistic view of Christ, 
which, not utterly rejecting him as the Sent of God, 
admits as little of him and in him as it can, which 
would find confirmation in repudiating the fourth 
Gospel, and which would be equally glad to expur- 
gate the synoptics and St. Paul. But even those who 
occupy this sunken plane, as they have grown more 
spiritual, have grown into the love of the fourth 
Gospel ; while all the saints of inmost initiation — 
those in and through whom the Church has shone 
with the purest lustre and wrought with the divinest 
efficacy — have found their choicest nutriment in the 
bread that has come down to them from heaven in this 
wonderful book. 

Who wrote it t If it be true ; if Jesus of Nazareth 
was all that it describes and relates, and the record 
was written by his nearest friend, — we can account for 
its authorship, and can believe that the writer, though 
a pure and holy man, was but a man of his time, 
brought into intimate communion with him who is 
" the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." If, however, 
this is not a literal biography, but a semi-mythical 
narrative and a series of monologues founded on the 
life and sayings of a wise and virtuous, but illiterate 
Galilean peasant, then we have a far greater than 
Jesus in its author. We have in him the true founder 
of the Christian Church : for it is built and rests this 



84 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

day on no other Christ than the Christ, real or imag- 
inary, of the fourth Gospel. Were this Gospel proved 
to be a fiction, the most advanced Christians of every 
section of the Church would exclaim, ''They have 
taken away my Lord, and I know not where they 
have laid him." Who was this wonderful man, 
this transcendent creator, this unparalleled religious 
genius ? As we run over the list of Christian writers 
for the century succeeding the apostolic age, there is 
not one of them whom we can pronounce equal to such 
an achievement, — not one of them who is above m^edioc- 
rity. The few remains of the apostolic fathers fall very 
far below the mark. We should have to come down 
to Augustine or Jerome before we could find one who 
could even be imagined capable of such an endeavor ; 
and they and their most gifted successors breathe 
more than all else the very inspiration caught from 
this record, and but for this would have left behind 
them far less illustrious names than they bear. It is 
impossible that such a writer should not have made 
his ineffaceable mark on his own time, and left a name 
for the admiration and reverence of all times. The 
apostle John is the only man of the first two centuries, 
the traditions of whose life and character represent 
him as adequate to this work ; and if he was the 
author, we know that his record is true. 

Even Renan, whose candor we have frequent rea- 
son to praise, admits a large Johannine element in the 
fourth Gospel, and supposes that it was compiled by 
John's disciples, in great part from their recollections or 
memoranda of his teachings. But no one who reads 



JESUS THE SAME IN ALL THE GOSPELS. 85 

this book with an-ilnbiassed mind can suppose it a 
composition by prentice hands ; a compilation ; a work 
of other than single authorship ; an infiltration through 
secondary channels. Whoever wrote it had either 
seen and heard what he records, or else had a vivid- 
ness of conception and a power of realistic description 
of his imaginings surpassing all that has been em- 
bodied in the literature of the ages. 

But it is said that the Jesus of the fourth Gospel is 
an entirely different character from the Jesus of the 
synoptics. So far, however, is this from being the 
case that the most that we can say is that he is all of 
their Jesus, and more. The human traits are the same 
in the four. The narrative, so far as it is parallel, is 
coincident, the only difference being that the fourth 
Gospel bears the marks of a closer intimacy, a more 
realizing sympathy with its subject, as must have been 
the case if the author held that peculiar relation of 
Christ's confidential friend in which he professes to 
stand. But is Jesus even more or greater in the 
fourth Gospel than in the other three "i Have we 
not in them intimations of all that is more fully 
developed in the fourth .'* As regards outward inci- 
dent, the raising of Lazarus seems to us unique, from 
the intense vividness and lifelikeness of the narrative. 
But can it have presented a grander spectacle, or im- 
plied a more godlike sympathy or a more sovereign 
power in the Conqueror of death, than the scene at 
the gates of Nain, when Jesus meets the funeral pro- 
cession, sees the widow in her desolate agony follow- 
ing her only son to the grave, arrests the bier, raises 



86 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

the lifeless form, and gives the youth to his mother s 
embrace, while for the wild wail of the mourners rises 
the glad shout, " God hath visited and redeemed his 
people " ? Then, as to the alleged peculiarities in 
John's representations of the exalted personality of 
Jesus, are they peculiar to him ? Have we not as full 
and emphatic, though generally less detailed, indica- 
tions of them in the synoptics ? Nay, one of the 
loftiest of these representations is drawn out by Mat- 
thew with an amplitude far transcending that of the 
fourth Gospel. In the latter Jesus repeatedly speaks of 
himself as the Judge of the world ; but what are 
those dogmatic statements compared with the dis- 
course recorded by Matthew, in which the Son of 
man sits on the throne of his glory, and all nations 
are gathered before him, and divided as a shepherd 
divides the sheep from the goats, the sheep on his 
right hand, the goats on his left ? What higher claims 
does Jesus make for himself in the fourth Gospel, than 
when he says, " All things are delivered unto me of 
my Father ; " " All power is given unto me in heaven 
and on earth ; " " Hereafter shall ye see the Son of 
man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming 
in the clouds of heaven ; " " Lo, I am with you alway, 
even to the end of the world " ? Nor is the promise 
of the Holy Spirit, which fills so large a space in the 
fourth Gospel, wanting in the synoptics. " Take no 
thought how or what ye shall speak ; for it shall be 
given you in the same hour what ye shall speak ; for 
it is not ye that speak, but the spirit of your Father 
that speaketh in you ; " and again, " Tarry ye in the 



DISCOURSES IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 87 

city of Jerusalem nrrtil ye be endued with power from 
on high." 

Yet it must be admitted that there are in the fourth 
Gospel numerous discourses of Jesus, coinciding in 
sentiment with his utterances in the synoptics, yet 
pitched, so to speak, on a higher key, more abstract, 
more spiritual, dwelling with greater length and with 
more minuteness of specification on his own person- 
ality, his relations to the Father, and his mission as 
the world's Redeemer. But these discourses, in the 
first place, contain nothing which the Jesus of the 
synoptics might not have said if he was what they 
represent him to have been. Then, the first three 
Gospels, confessedly in general circulation when the 
fourth Gospel was written, were doubtless in the 
possession of its author ; and, whatever our theory 
of its composition, it was manifestly his purpose, not 
so much to cover the same ground as to supply their 
deficiencies. Accordingly, except in the events of the 
crucifixion and resurrection, which obviously could not 
have been omitted in any biography of Jesus, he hardly 
relates any incident which they record, unless in con- 
nection with some discourse which they had omitted. 
Then, too, it is perfectly manifest that the first three 
Gospels were written with a missionary purpose, ad- 
dressed to those who were strangers to the events 
recorded ; and they would naturally have contained 
only such of the discourses of Jesus as could have 
been readily understood by those who had not yet 
been initiated into the rudiments of the new religion. 
For such a purpose a large portion of the contents of 



88 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

the fourth Gospel would have been not only inappro- 
priate, but even a hinderance to the reception of the 
teachings which were more nearly level with the un- 
instructed mind. It is equally manifest that the 
fourth Gospel was designed for readers who were 
already Christians ; who had, in St. Paul's expressive 
figure, been fed with milk till they were able to bear 
meat. Perhaps, too, many of the discourses recorded 
in the fourth Gospel were not heard by the apostles 
collectively. This Gospel gives intimations of several 
visits to Jerusalem not mentioned by the synoptics. 
On these occasions John may have been his Master's 
only friendly companion. 

But, after all, may not a difference of receptivity 
among the members of the sacred college have been 
a prime reason and a sufficient reason for the differ- 
ence between the synoptics and the fourth Gospel } 
We will suppose a strictly parallel case with regard to 
Socrates. We will leave Plato out of the account ; for 
his Socrates is Socrates plus Plato. He undoubtedly 
meant to be understood as often using the name of 
Socrates as an interlocutor, in dialogues for which his 
own thought furnished the whole material. But in 
Xenophon we undoubtedly have a faithful biographer 
of Socrates. He occupied toward the great philoso- 
pher the position, first of a disciple, and then of an 
intimate, admiring, and loving friend ; in fine, very 
much the relation which John is said to have sustained 
to Jesus. He was a man of high culture, and he gives 
numerous specimens of his master's discussions of 
philosophical subjects. Now suppose that three men 



PAUVS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST. 89 

of Athens, not edneated men, not philosophers, had 
become similarly attached to Socrates, so that they 
followed him round from place to place, deposited the 
good things that fell from his lips by the wayside in 
faithful memory, were profoundly interested when he 
talked on common subjects to plain, simple people 
like themselves, but when he entered on a formal 
discussion or an elaborate argument, though they 
delighted to listen, yet remembered very little. If 
these men had written their several books of " Memo- 
rabilia" of Socrates, their books would have borne about 
the same relation to Xenophon's " Memorabilia" which 
the synoptic Gospels bear to the fourth Gospel. They 
would have omitted a large part of what Xenophon 
has recorded, because if they heard it with the out- 
ward ear, they had not taken it in ; it was above the 
standard of their culture, above their receptivity. If 
St. Paul had been among the personal followers of 
Christ, he would undoubtedly have written a Gospel 
like John's ; but we may reasonably believe that such 
a record would have transcended the ability of Mat- 
thew, Mark, and Luke. 

Here let me remind you, in passing, of what I dwelt 
upon more fully in a former Lecture, with regard to 
all the Gospels, that, though Paul gives and naturally 
would have given in his epistles few biographical 
details, his conception of Christ is not one whit less 
grand and lofty than that of the fourth Gospel ; and 
his epistles were written considerably earlier than the 
earliest date assigned to that Gospel. The conception, 
therefore, was full-grown in the Church in John's life^ 



90 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

time ; consequently there is no need, in order to leave 
time for its development, of fixing a later date for the 
Gospel. 

Another ground on which the Johannine or early 
origin of the fourth Gospel has been denied is the 
alleged tendency to Gnosticism, according to some 
critics, at least the undoubted reference to it, in the 
proem to the Gospel, which, it is said, implies a date 
later than the close of the first century. That there 
are allusions to Gnostic notions in the proem seems to 
me certain beyond a question ; but it is in antagonism, 
not in acquiescence. Yet these allusions do not im- 
pair the validity of the date traditionally assigned to 
the Gospel. Gnosticism has not, indeed, a defined 
place in the history of the Church till early in the 
second century ; but it must in its essence, from 
the very nature of the case, have been coeval with the 
earliest propagation of Christianity. A mould already 
existed for it in the Zoroastrian dualism and the sys- 
tems of aeons, which prevailed throughout Asia Minor, 
had become largely incorporated with the Neo-Plato- 
nism of Alexandria, and had gained some measure of 
currency in every part of the Roman Empire. When 
Christianity was nominally embraced by the adherents 
of this philosophy, it lent its sacred names to their 
pre-existing notions ; and thus was formed a strange 
compound in which an apostle could have recognized 
only the faintest vestiges of his own spiritual faith. 
It is certain that Gnostic errors are referred to in the 
Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, the 
Pauline authorship of which there is no good reason 



THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND GNOSTICISM. 91 

for doubting,* and "for which even those who deny 
their genuineness assign a date earher than that 
which we would claim for the fourth Gospel. Cerin- 
thus was undoubtedly a Gnostic, and ecclesiastical 
tradition that bears all the marks of authenticity 
represents him to have been contemporary with St. 
John, and to have been regarded by the venerable 
apostle as an atrocious perverter of the truth. Ire- 
naeus expressly says that John had the doctrines of the 
Gnostics in view in the composition of his Gospel. 

The Gnostics represented the Logos, the Monogenes 
or Only-begotten, Life, and Light as aeons distinct from 
the Supreme Being ; they regarded the Creator of the 
world and Author of the Jewish dispensation as an 
inferior, imperfect, and — according to some of their 
teachers — malignant being ; and maintained that 
Christ was sent by the Supreme God to deliver 
men from his tyranny and from the yoke of Judaism. 
Ephesus, where St. John is believed to have passed 
the last years of his life and to have written his 
Gospel, was the metropolis of Gnosticism. If the 
author of the fourth Gospel lived where these opin- 
ions were taking root, it was incumbent on him to 
show that Life, Light, and the Logos were not dis- 
tinct from, but identical with, the Supreme God ; that 
the Supreme God created the world and gave the 
Jewish law ; and that the same God sent the Mono- 
genes Jesus Christ not to destroy, but to complete the 
law ; not to deliver men from its tyranny, but to con- 
summate for and in them the blessedness of which it 

* Renan admits their genuineness. 



92 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

was the pledge and promise. I need not say how 
thoroughly this work is accomplished in the first 
eighteen verses of the fourth Gospel, in which the 
author, as with a prophet's wand, waves back to their 
native nothingness the chimeras of an arrogant and 
presumptuous philosophy. 

An anti-Gnostic purpose is, then, perfectly evident 
in this introduction of the fourth Gospel. But it deals 
with Gnosticism only in its first stages, in its rudiments. 
Had it been written, as it is said to have been, in the 
second century, there would have been a heavier and 
a more complex task devolved upon the author. The 
system which he opposed grew rapidly. The Valen- 
tinians, whose founder flourished about a.d. 140, num- 
bered no less than thirty aeons, in pairs, male and 
female. Basilides, who lived about fifteen years earlier, 
promulgated a system not less complicated, and even 
more grotesque and absurd. Still earlier in the century, 
there sprang up in the East the Ophitic form of Gnos- 
ticism, in which the serpent in Eden, the serpents that 
bit the Israelites in the wilderness, the rod which be- 
came a serpent in the hand of Moses, and the brazen 
serpent, all represented spiritual agencies, — the former 
two malignant, the latter two beneficent. Had the 
fourth Gospel been written after this heresy grew rife, 
it is impossible that the reference to the brazen ser- 
pent in the conversation with Nicodemus should have 
passed without comment. In fine, there are in this 
Gospel no traces whatever of several forms which we 
know that Gnosticism assumed in the second century ; 
while there are evident references to opinions which 



THE FOURTH GOSPEL JOHN'S. 93 

must have been heW^by Cerinthus and his Gnostic 
contemporaries, and with which St. John must have 
been conversant in the latter years of his hfe. 

I have shown you that the fourth Gospel must have 
been written in the first century, that John could 
have written it, that it is too remarkable a book to 
have passed into circulation anonymously, and that of 
all the early Christians whose names have come down 
to us there is none but John who could have written 
it. These reasons for believing in the genuineness 
of the fourth Gospel as the work of John, stand by 
their own validity and need no corroboration. Yet 
they are confirmed by the critical consciousness of 
the sincere and loving follower of Jesus, who, the 
more intimate his kindred with his Lord, feels only 
the fuller assurance that this record can have come 
from none other than the nearest and best beloved of 
the disciples.* 

* For an eminently able treatment of the points at issue among 
critics concerning the fourth Gospel, the reader is referred to " The 
Fourth Gospel the Heart of Christ," by Rev. Edmund H. Sears, 
D.D., — a work remarkable equally for its acute reasoning and its 
truly Johannine spirit of devotion. 



LECTURE V. 

MIRACLES AN OBSTACLE TO FAITH. — PANTHEISTIC OBJEC- 
TIONS. — OBJECTIONS FROM THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW. — 
OBJECTIONS FROM EXPERIENCE. — NEED AND USE OF MIRA- 
CLES. — MIRACLES CONSONANT WITH THE PERSON AND 
MISSION OF CHRIST. — VERIFIED BY HUMAN HISTORY. — 
CONSISTENT WITH THE KNOWN METHODS OF THE DIVINE 
ADMINISTRATION. 

'TPHE arguments urged in the preceding Lectures 
-*■ would have be^n multipHed to waste in any 
Other cause than that in which they are employed. 
The genuineness of most ancient books, and the 
authenticity of many universally admitted facts of 
earlier times, rest on much weaker evidence than sus- 
tains the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospels. 
Testimony as clear, strong, and manifold as we have 
to the leading facts in the life of Jesus would com- 
pletely rehabilitate ancient history. Why is this 
testimony denied or doubted .'' There was a time 
when a repugnancy to Christianity on moral grounds 
accounted to a large extent for such unbelief as 
prevailed, and when that very unbelief itself had 
almost the weight of affirmative evidence ; for such 
men as Rousseau, Voltaire, Paine, could hardly have 
been found on the right side, on the divine side, of 
any question involving principle and character. The 



PRESENT PHASIS OF SCEPTICISM. 95 

objections of that -sehool were plausible, but super- 
ficial, sneers oftener than arguments, and levelled 
rather at the antecedents and accessories of Chris- 
tianity than at Christ and his Gospel. 

Very different is the case now. Infidelity seldom 
appears in scurrilous forms, associated with banter 
and ribaldry. It is frank, honest, earnest, respect- 
ful and often even reverent toward the faith it repu- 
diates ; and among its expositors are not a few men 
of pure character, of high scientific attainments, 
and evidently sincere and zealous in the search for 
truth. They have no disrelish for the morality of the 
Gospel, no disesteem for Jesus as an exemplar and a 
preacher of righteousness, no hostility to Christian 
institutions. They reject Christianity solely on ac- 
count of its miraculous element. At the same time, 
there are others, who with evident sincerity claim to 
be called Christians, profess to receive Jesus Christ 
as an unparalleled model of spiritual excellence, and 
as the wisest teacher of religion and morals that the 
world has yet seen, who nevertheless repudiate the 
record of his miracles, and maintain that he was no 
more or other than any man is capable of becoming. 
These persons profess to receive the teachings of 
Christ, not on his authority, but on their own, on 
account of the accordance of his words with their 
own intuitions and experience. Yet, in order to be 
consistent with themselves, they can receive only a 
limited portion of his teachings ; for the paternal 
providence of God over individual beings and events, 
the spiritual help granted to aspirants after goodness, 



96 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

and the efficacy of prayer, — all of them prominent in 
the discourses of Jesus, — are liable to precisely the 
same objections that are urged against the miraculous 
narratives. 

The alleged incredibility of miracles is my subject 
this evening. 

There is one theory of the universe, very exten- 
sively maintained among both philosophers and natu- 
ralists, which would render miracles impossible, and, 
were they possible, worthless ; namely, that which 
denies the existence of a personal God, Thus Renan, 
an atheist, or a pantheist, — if a distinction is to be 
made where there is no essential difference, — is entire- 
ly self-consistent in maintaining that no evidence can 
authenticate a miracle. He writes : " I believe that 
there is not in the universe an intelligence superior 
to that of man ; there is no free existence superior to 
man, to whom an appreciable share may be assigned 
in the moral administration, any more than in the 
material government, of the universe." Of course, 
then, there exists no being who is not subordinated to 
the course and laws of nature. 

But miracles are denied by many sincere theists, 
on the ground of their incompatibility with the divine 
order of the universe, which implies the immutable- 
ness of natural laws. This order, it is said, has been 
invariable so far as observation and experience — 
whether our own or such as it is within our power to 
verify — are concerned ; we cannot conceive of its ever 
having been suspended or superseded ; and our assur- 
"ance of its present stability is so firm that no amount 



MIRACLES INSEPARABLE FROM CHRISTIANITY. 97 

of evidence could eonvince us of the occurrence of a 
miracle now. Still less can any clearness or accumu- 
lation of testimony bearing date nearly two thousand 
years ago suffice to cancel this intrinsic improbability. 
In approaching this subject, it concerns us to 
understand at the outset that the discussion cannot, 
by any possibility, be evaded. It is idle to say that 
our faith in this nineteenth century is in no need of 
miracles, in view of the far greater than miracle, — the 
moral evidence of the worth and power of Christian 
truth. This may be, nay, ought to be, the case with 
us, if we have drunk deeply of the spirit of Christ. 
Nay more, we can conceive that this same moral evi- 
dence might have been sufficient for those who lived 
for many months in his intimacy, and that the sacred 
flame of piety and love kindled in them might have 
been passed on from age to age even until now. In view 
of the contemptuous way in which miracles are treated 
by a supercilious philosophy, and are looked down 
upon as beggarly and obsolete elements by some who 
profess to believe them, we may wish that we were 
rid of them, and feel that we could defend Christian- 
ity all the better without them. But this is out of 
the question. If the Gospels are genuine, as we 
have seen reason to believe them to be, the miracles 
are inseparable from the religion and its Author. 
There can be no doubt that his earliest and closest 
followers believed in them. There can be no doubt 
that he professed to perform them. Christianity, the 
religion with which the person of Jesus Christ is 
indissolubly connected, is so allied with miracles that 

S 



98 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE, 

its defence without them is tantamount to its rejec- 
tion. 

In our investigation of this subject, it may be worth 
our while to inquire how far any man is authorized to 
deny the possibihty of miracles. What created being 
can know all that it was ever possible for the Creator 
to do } Does not the denial that miracles are possi- 
ble involve the assumption of a virtual co-divinity 
with God, of omniscience, of the capacity of search- 
ing and fathoming the depths of the Supreme Intel- 
ligence } God alone can know what God can do. If 
there be a God, infinite and eternal, it is at least con- 
ceivable that the cycles of his administration transcend 
the scrutiny and scope of a being so short-sighted 
and short-lived as man. If there be a God, his will 
is the first cause of outward nature ; that will might 
have made it entirely other than it is, so that in the 
normal course of events there should not have been a 
single feature in common with the present course ; 
and does not the power of constituting this entire 
difference include all lesser powers of the same kind 
and thus, of necessity, the power of modifying at will 
the existing order of things t 

But it is said, Causation is an essential category of 
human thought. An uncaused effect, or a non- 
efficient cause, is an absurdity. Very true, and- the 
atheist alone is chargeable with imagining this absur- 
dity. But what are the efficient causes in nature .-* 
Has any material agent been so analyzed as to show 
that there is, in the structure or arrangement of its 
particles, an inherent reason why it should, of its 



EFFICIENT CAUSES UNDISCOVERABIE. 99 

own force, producer-certain effects, and no others ? 
The latest philosophy, as it seems to me on valid 
grounds, makes of the imponderable elements in the 
universe — heat, light, magnetism, electricity, gravita- 
tion — but one force, identical in its nature, though 
Protean in its modes of manifestation. Can it be pre- 
tended that the physicist has actually manij3ulated a 
substance, force, or agency, in which he detects such 
specific inherent properties as fully account, by physi- 
cal causation, for the fire, the magnet, the thunder- 
bolt, the gravitating planet ? The same force, it is 
believed, sustains animal and vegetable life, sensation, 
muscular motion, cerebral action. But who has ex- 
plored the seat of life, traced it to its source, ana- 
lyzed its processes } The anatomist may demonstrate 
the adaptation of the various members and organs of 
the human body to the functions of the living man ; 
but he cannot say why or how that man ever lived. 
There is no visible or tangible cause for the life of 
the man who does or did live, that does not equally 
exist for the life of the steam-engine which never did 
and never will live ; for, according to the theory of 
the convertibility of force, the cause of the engine's 
motion and of the man's life is one and the same. A 
microscopic dissection of the apple-seed shows the 
germ from which the tree is developed ; but had the 
man who dissected it lived on a sand waste, and never 
seen or heard of a tree, he would have found nothing 
in the structure of the seed from which he could pre- 
dict the tree ; nor, when he first saw a tree, would he 
even have connected it in thought with the seed that 



lOO CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

he had analyzed. In fact, we know nothing o£ effi- 
cient causes in nature. We barely know that there 
are certain invariable sequences within the field of 
our observation and experience ; that some phenomena 
are always antecedent to and prophetical of others ; 
that is, that we live in an orderly universe. Yet 
efficient causation there must be. It may reside, 
though to us untraceable, in the antecedents which 
we call causes. The Creator may, as the Epicureans 
maintained, have lodged in the primitive rudimental 
atoms the power of life, growth, change, renewal, — a 
power which, without his interposition, can work un- 
spent from the beginning to the end of time. But, on 
this hypothesis, he who, for wise and benevolent ends, 
endowed brute matter with this living and unwasting 
power, may, for equally wise and benevolent reasons, 
at certain epochs of the world's history have sus- 
pended or superseded its action. 

But while efficient causes in nature elude our re- 
search, do not the identity and convertibility of force 
point to the Omnipresent God as not only the First 
Cause, but the sole Cause.'' Can his presence be inert .'* 
Can we conceive of him as eternally quiescent, watch- 
ing the revolution of the machinery which in the 
beginning he put in motion } Is not convertible force 
simply God in nature, varied in manifestation, yet 
unchanged in power, wisdom, and love } Is there 
not as sound philosophy, as rich poetry, in the con- 
ception of the Hebrew seers, in whose thought " the 
God of glory thundereth ; " " He maketh the clouds 
his chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind ; " 



MIRACLES ONLY WHEN NEEDED, lOI 

" He sendeth the -springs into the valleys ; " " He 
causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for 
the service of man " ? If this be so, it is surely 
within his omnipotence to perform directly, and 
without their usual antecedents, acts which are ordi- 
narily preceded by signs that indicate their occurrence 
in the near future ; to convert water into wine without 
its passing through the various alembics of nature 
and art ; to cure the paralytic without the medicines 
which are the wonted tokens of his working ; to 
restore life to the inanimate human form, which had 
drawn every breath of its previous life immediately 
from his all-pervading Spirit. 

But it is said. While we admit the abstract possi- 
bility of miracles, they are so entirely opposed to 
ordinary human experience in our time and in all 
time, that even else strong testimony cannot make 
them credible. I answer that, were not this objection 
capable of being urged, miracles could not occur, or, 
occurring, would be unmeaning, futile, and worthless. 
The very idea of miracles presupposes their infrequency, 
— presupposes a general order of nature, transgressed 
only at the rarest intervals and for the most momentous 
ends. Were what we term miracles frequent, there 
would be no established order of nature, and conse- 
quently no miracles properly so called. The only 
purpose which such events could serve would be to 
unsettle human calculations and to baffle human ex- 
pectation. Frequent, they would fail to attract atten- 
tion, to elicit reverence, to put man in a waiting 
attitude for the voice of God. Horace's rule for 



I02 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

dramatic composition, " Let not a . god intervene 
unless there be a knot worth his untying" * (that is, an 
occasion worthy of his intervention), involves a prin- 
ciple which, as it applies not so much to the author as 
to the receptivity of the audience, we may, without 
irreverence, transfer to the administration of the uni- 
verse. Did God intervene by miracle except for 
momentous ends, and at decisive epochs of human 
history, man is so constituted that this intervention 
would be of little or no avail. 

Now there are objects worthy of the divine interven- 
tion. There are ends of incalculable importance to 
man, which, so far as we can see, can be accomplished 
only by miracle. 

In the first place, a clear apprehension of the per- 
sonality of God as distinct from nature is attained 
only through miracle. It is constantly and rightly 
maintained by the most learned non-Christian writers 
on the history of religion, by men as familiar with the 
scriptures of Brahminism and Buddhism as any of us 
are with the Gospel of John, that the personality of 
God is an element imported into religious thought 
solely from the Semitic religions, — that all the other old 
religions — alike the monotheistic, dualistic, and poly- 
theistic — are mere pantheism, which, they maintain 
(and here of course I part company with them), tends 
with the progress of philosophy to become the domi- 
nant, and will ultimately be the sole, faith of what is 
now Christendom.! It is, as I have said, no part of 

* Nee Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus 

Ineiderit. . . . 
t See Appendix, note G. 



MIRACLES ATTEST A PERSONAL GOD. 103 

my plan to detail the_evidences of Judaism ; but, were 
there not ample reason beside to believe the Old 
Testament miracles authentic, I should believe them 
solely on account of the pure personal monotheism of 
the Hebrew Scriptures. Unless, in the strong figure 
of the psalmist, God had "bowed the heavens and 
come down," there is no possibility that Judaism 
should have differed in this respect from the other 
religions of the civilized or semi-civilized Eastern 
world, Man's inevitable tendency in the earlier 
stages of his culture has uniformly been to identify 
divine power with its manifestations, deity with 
force, God with nature. The gods of polytheism are 
separate world-forces, symbolized in the ruder, person- 
ified in the more refined, forms of idolatry. With the 
growth of knowledge, it is ascertained that the universe 
is not under a multiform administration ; that filaments 
of interdependence and harmony unite its various por- 
tions and departments ; that fire and air, land and 
ocean, are parts of the same system ; and then the 
many world-forces arc resolved into one or two, either 
the Soul of the Universe {Anima Mu?idi), or Ormuzd 
and Ahriman. But these are not personal gods. They 
are the life-principle perpetually striving to develop 
itself in material forms, — each living being emanating 
from it, and ultimately reabsorbed into it. There is no 
manifestation of the divine, except in and through 
nature ; therefore God and nature are one. In the 
higher Greek philosophy, indeed, we have what we 
may term semi-detached Deity ; but the distinct and 
definite personality of God — the idea which pervades 



I04 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

the whole Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and 
through them the Koran — is reached in no one 
instance by any non-Semitic reHgion or philosophy. 
Still farther, in our own time, the inevitable tendency 
of the rejection of historical Christianity is toward 
pantheism. The rationalism of Germany, the liberal- 
ism of France, the secularism of England, the free 
religion of America, are all succumbing to this ten- 
dency. Greg, in his ''Enigmas of Life," deems it 
necessary to apologize for clinging to a belief in the 
divine personality ; admits that with his premises he 
cannot justify it on rational grounds ; and says that it 
is probably due, together with his faith in individual 
immortality, to the lingering prejudices of a Christian 
education, — prejudices which have not been strong 
enough to hold back even the son of such a Christian 
educator as Thomas Arnold from rejecting a personal 
God along with the Christ of the Gospels. Strauss, in 
" The Old Faith and the New," has given the world 
an invaluable legacy, in his plain and logical develop- 
ment of the natural and inevitable tendency of ration- 
alism to lapse into virtual atheism. At the present 
moment, the majority in numbers, the overwhelming 
majority in learning, talent, and influence, among those 
within the pale of Christendom who are not Christians, 
are pantheists or atheists. 

But miracle is the demonstration of a personal God. 
It detaches the Creator from his works. It lays bare 
the Almighty arm to human vision. It shows God, 
not only in, but above nature, — ^its Controller, its Sov- 
ereign Ruler, under whose hand what seem the ada- 



MIR A CLES A TTEST IMMOR TALITY. 1 05 

mantine bonds of Jaw are loosed, and forces that had 
been deemed inflexible become fluent and ductile. 
From this faith no believer in miracle can fall away. 
To this faith no religion that rests on miracle can be 
false. Miracle, then, is God's mode of self-revelation. 
Imbedded in authentic history, it need not be repeated. 
Its testimony is coeval in duration with its veracious 
record. The sublime truth which it embodies is re- 
vealed afresh to every believing soul that receives the 
record. 

To pass to another topic, to us of hardly less mo- 
mentous interest than the being of a personal God, 
I know not how immortality is to be made certain 
except by miracle. It is craved by man as he ap- 
proaches his full development, and the wish naturally 
begets, but does not authenticate, the belief. There 
are in man powers and affections adapted to continuous 
existence, capable of indefinite growth ; and the con- 
sciousness of these inspires an apprehension — more 
or less clear and strong — of immortality. There are, 
too, analogies of nature which authorize the hope of a 
life beyond death. But analogy can only remove ob- 
jections. It never has the force of affirmative proof 
or argument. It may corroborate the belief established 
on other grounds, but can furnish no sure ground of 
its own. Moreover, there are in nature fully as numer- 
ous analogies of an opposite bearing ; and whether 
these or those of a more hopeful character shall pre- 
dominate depends on the mood of the hour. The 
least reassuring aspects of nature are most likely 
to present themselves to the thought in seasons of 

5* 



Io6 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

bereavement or under the shadow of death, when 
those of the happiest omen are most needed. Con- 
sciousness of immortaUty there cannot be ; for con- 
sciousness has a present only, no past but through 
memory, and no future. 

Accordingly, we look all through Pagan antiquity 
in vain for a parallel to those glorious bursts of ecstatic 
assurance which we find so often in St. Paul, — the de- 
sire to depart and be with Christ, the certainty that 
there is laid up for him a crown of righteousness, — that 
the corruptible shall put on incorruption, the mortal 
be clothed in immortality. Socrates, in dying, hopes 
that he is going to the society of good men, but is 
unwilling to make positive and confident affirmation 
to that effect ; and, if we may believe Plato, his chief 
argument for the future eternity rests on the assump- 
tion of the past eternity of individual being. Cicero 
commences his masterly argument for immortality 
by showing that, if his reasoning should be found 
inconclusive, annihilation is no evil ; and when his 
daughter lies dead in his house, he confesses that the 
proofs that had seemed to him so strong when he 
committed them to writing yield him no support or 
consolation. Seneca contradicts himself on this point, 
and leaves no certain utterance. Marcus Aurelius 
manifests earnest hope rather than strong faith. 
Epictetus evidently did not expect a life after death. 
In Plutarch, indeed, we have no token of serious doubt 
as to immortality ; but this belief occupies with him 
by no means the foremost place which it holds in the 
faith and the motive power of every Christian, and in 



TOKENS OF A TEACHER SENT FROM GOD. 107 

his eminently prosperous career it was exposed to 
fewer severe trials than occur in ordinary human 
experience. 

This is a subject on which absolute certainty can 
come only through revelation, oral or visible, — in words 
that bear the stamp of divinity, or in events which 
shall show that death is not destruction. As immor- 
tality is not a truth of consciousness, and cannot be 
verified by any human experience that comes within 
the scope of natural laws, it can be made known to 
man only in modes in which natural laws are super- 
seded or transcended. 

There are yet other fundamental subjects on which 
the truth is objective as regards man, and, if known 
at all, must be known by testimony from God ; that 
is, by miracle. To this category belong the divine 
Fatherhood, the pertinence and efficacy of prayer, and 
the relations which unrepented sin and repentance 
establish between man and his Creator, this last being 
a question coextensive in importance with immortality 
itself. 

All these truths, indeed, have been and are to be 
transmitted and propagated by the speech and writing 
of men possessed of only ordinary endowments. But 
the speech or writing must emanate in the first in- 
stance from an authoritative source ; else its antiquity 
or its wide diffusion can create for it no prestige, no 
claim upon belief. With regard to these subjects, 
no man has or can have had underived knowledge. 
Where the evidence of consciousness or intuition is 
unattainable, no degree of wisdom or goodness can 



I08 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

fully authenticate a man's statements. If Jesus Christ 
was in every thing except his superior wisdom and 
excellence like you and me, a man with none but self- 
acquired knowledge and endowments, we can easily 
understand why he believed and taught immortality ; 
for such a life as he was leading would have seemed 
to him too precious to perish, and he would have so 
yearned to live on that the wish by its intensity would 
have become prophecy to his own thought. But his 
belief would be no valid ground for mine. His words 
would have merely the authority which belongs to 
those of every sound thinker. But if God virtually 
points to him, and says of him, " This is my Messen- 
ger ; receive his words as mine," — then those words 
become not opinion, but truth ; not reasoning, but 
knowledge. They are attested not by the weight 
and worth of a human intellect and character, but 
by the only Being in the universe who has underived 
knowledge in the realm that transcends finite con- 
sciousness and experience. Now there is no con- 
ceivable way in which God can say this, except by 
miracle. There must be something in the antece- 
dents, belongings, doings, or experiences of the person 
thus authenticated, which shall set him apart from all 
others as a God-marked man, and shall thus constitute 
his ^recognized commission as a divinely sent teacher. 
This commission may be universal and perpetual, 
though the teacher speak to but few, and early vanish 
from mortal sight. His words may be recorded with 
the same accuracy and transmitted with the same 
fidelity which characterize the record and transmission 



TESTIMONY TO SPIRITUAL TRUTHS. IO9 

of utterances of prii"n£amportance in judicial and politi- 
cal affairs ; and the events that constitute his creden- 
tials are as capable of becoming facts of authentic 
history as any other events of his time. Still farther, 
these events, if authentic, are a sufficient guaranty for 
the substantially correct transmission of the words to 
which they give authority ; for if, by events aside from 
the common course of nature, God attests communi- 
cations of such a kind as to be obviously designed for 
and adapted to all men of all ages, it is inconceivable 
that he should not provide for their authentic and 
permanent record. For this reason I regard all that 
is essential in the question of inspiration as involved 
in the authenticity of the Christian miracles. If God 
interposed by miracle to teach men of duty, of pardon, 
of heaven, and of the way to everlasting salvation, we 
are sure that he has given enduring validity and effi- 
cacy to his work, whatever may be our technical 
formula for the shape of the record or the aninms of 
its writers. Thus miracle may furnish adequate and 
permanent evidence for the contents of a divine reve- 
lation. 

It is said, however, that, from the very nature of 
things, physical facts, material events, cannot attest 
spiritual truths, which demand evidence of their own 
order, and can be believed only as recognized by in- 
tuition and verified by experience. This statement, 
which seems plausible, will not bear examination. It 
is not true even within the legitimate range of ex- 
perience. We have an undoubting belief of very 
numerous spiritual facts, truths, and laws, which we 



no CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

are capable of testing, yet never have tested for our- 
selves. The psychological phenomena of drunkenness 
and of opium-eating are believed by those who have 
made no trial of them ; and it is a belief, too, which 
has a decisive effect on conduct, on the one hand 
deterring not a few from those first steps down the 
declivity of ruin which it is so hard to retrace, and, on 
the other hand, sometimes exciting a morbid curiosity 
as to the fantastic and delirious joy of inebriation. 
Equally may a thoroughly bad man receive on faith 
the happiness that results from a virtuous course, and 
may be thus induced to make first experiments in that 
direction. It may be said, indeed, that statements of 
this sort need no miraculous attestation : yet it is 
conceivable that from a teacher thus sanctioned they 
might come with a stress of influence on opinion, 
feeling, and character, not to be otherwise attained ; 
so that, were it only to promulgate what to the devel- 
oped spiritual consciousness are mere moral truisms, 
there might be adequate ground for miraculous inter- 
vention, in an age of declension and depravity. 

As regards such spiritual truths as are objective to 
our own consciousness, miracle is so far from being 
an inappropriate evidence, that it may be a manifes- 
tation of the very truth to which it bears witness, and 
so may not only verify, but be, a revelation. Thus, as 
I have said, an event aside from the wonted order of 
nature is in itself a manifestation of the fundamental 
truth of the spiritual universe, — the existence of God 
independently of nature. What, too, are the miracles 
of healing in the New Testament but the universal 



MIRACLES BEAR WITNESS TO CHRIST. Ill 

Providence made visible ? What the raising of Laza- 
rus, but the indestructibility of the soul submitted to 
the evidence of eye, and ear, and hand ? As regards 
other truths, it may be impossible to trace in miracles 
any specific relation to them, and they, therefore, are 
not directly proved by miraculous evidence ; but, so 
far as works beyond the ordinary scope of human 
power authenticate a teacher, they, of necessity, attest 
the truths which he utters, though they be objective, 
and therefore not capable of verification by his hearers, 
or though they be such as can be verified only by the 
experience to which they open the way and afford the 
motive. 

On yet another ground we may trace what might 
seem a necessity, or, at least, an adequate occasion 
for miracle. Jesus Christ professed to be more than 
a good man and a teacher of piety. He claimed to 
be the Son of God in a peculiar and pre-eminent sense, 
and, as Mediator and Redeemer, to stand in certain 
relations to God and man in which no one else has 
stood. It is not to our present purpose to define 
these relations, or rather, it is essential to our purpose 
to leave them undefined ; for the position on which I 
would base my argument is, that to all Christian 
believers, of whatever name or creed, Jesus Christ, 
though man, is more than man, holds a sole place and 
office with reference to the human race, and thus 
constitutes in a certain sense and degree a class by 
himself. If this be so, we may maintain, first, that he 
could be designated to man as holding this place and 
office only by miracles ; and, secondly, that what we 



112 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

call miracles, though superhuman, may be, as wrought 
by him, or for him, or through him, no more super- 
human than he himself is, but as regards him and his 
office simply normal, fully as accordant with his place 
in the universe as the power which man ordinarily 
exerts over nature is with his place in the universe. 
These considerations are applicable not only to his 
own alleged miracles, but equally to those of earlier 
religious dispensations, typical and prophetic of his 
coming, and to those wrought under his immediate aus- 
pices for the establishment of his advent and mission 
among the indelible facts of history. If it be main- 
tained that it was intrinsically impossible for the Al- 
mighty to put upon the earth a higher being than the 
normal man, then miracles may be equally impossible ; 
for, when we once begin to limit the infinite attributes 
of God, we can no longer base any argument on his 
plenary power. But if it was possible for him to send 
into the world a greater than man to redeem man, 
then was it equally possible for him to connect with 
that Redeemer's advent and earthly life physical 
phenomena that might indicate and verify his place 
among men. So far then as, aside from the miracu- 
lous narratives, there is recognized in the character of 
Jesus, in his influence, in his position as a factor in 
human history, aught in which he stands alone among 
men, aught that worthily gives him " a name above 
every name," so far do those miraculous narratives 
become probable. Did the evangelists represent 
Jesus as an ordinary man, there would be a manifest 
incongruity between his person and his alleged mira- 



CONDITION OF MAN BEFORE CHRIST. 1 13 

cles. If he was whatjihey say he was, those works of 
power and love were no more or other than might 
have been expected of him and through him. 

I have thus shown you that there were ends of 
prime importance, in the promulgation of objective 
truth which man needed to know, and in the authen- 
tication of a Teacher and Redeemer, which could, so 
far as we can discern, have been effected only by 
miracles, and which therefore presented occasions 
that seem worthy of the divine interposition. The 
probability thus established is confirmed by a view of 
the condition of mankind before and since Christ. 
The course of the world before Christ was a constant 
degeneracy and decline. His advent was at the mid- 
night of history. There had been noble nations : 
there remained not one. The Greeks had lost what 
of manliness they once had, and their refinement had 
degenerated into gross sensuality. The Romans had 
parted with their purity and truth ; while their valor 
had become rapacity, and their patriotism faction. 
The imperial city was a hospitable metropolis for the 
vices as for the gods of all lands, and with regard to 
every form of depravity the practical maxim alike of 
court and of populace was, " It is fitting to learn even 
from an enemy ; " * and thence and thither, with the 
pulsation of a common pohtical life to the remotest 
east and south, and to the confines of impenetrable 
Scandinavian forests, were outward and refluent cur- 
rents swollen with the fetid sewage of vice and crime. 
Religion, such as there had been, was dead. Philoso- 

* "Fas est et ab hoste doceri." 



114 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

phy survived chiefly under the loosened zone of Epi- 
cureanism ; for the Stoics, the only really great men 
that remained, were in numbers a scanty minority 
among those who claimed to be adepts in liberal culture. 
In Judaea a heartless formalism had replaced the piety 
of earlier ages ; the harp of praise gave but the retreat- 
ing echo of its wonted strains ; and they who rebuilt 
the sepulchres of the prophets bore testimony against 
themselves in professing to honor those whose virtues 
they suffered to slumber. There was upon the earth no 
hopeful sign, no source of reforming influence, no foun- 
tain for renewed life. A brighter past and a darker 
future bounded the horizon of every thoughtful man, 
except so far as Hebrew prophecy had given its color 
to expectation. 

What do we see since that age } Progress, but no 
decline. Dawn, sunrise, high morning, but no reced- 
ing of the shadow on the sundial. Barbaric irruptions 
that fertilize, when they threaten to destroy. Dark 
ages, like those dreary spring-days whose drenching 
rains are the harbinger of all that is gladdening in 
garden, field, and orchard, — ages during which humane 
principles are taking root, institutions and habits of 
charity and mercy springing into being, slavery melt- 
ing away and vanishing. There has not been since 
the Christian era a century than which we can say 
that the preceding century was better. 

This advance without retrogression has been insep- 
arably connected with Christianity, and that, the 
Christianity of the Gospels, resting on miraculous 
evidence. It is primarily in this aspect that Chris- 



MIR A CLES NO T AN AFTER TIIO UGHT. 1 1 5 

tianity has been received, diffused, and transmitted. 
We may attach a greater or less importance to indi- 
vidual miracles ; but we cannot be mistaken in attrib- 
uting a preponderant influence to the superhuman 
element in Christianity, of which these miracles form 
a part. The Titans of our race had done their best 
to raise it, and had failed. The earth did not give 
them a strength which could " spread undivided, 
operate unspent." It is only the religion which 
claims to be heaven-born that can grow with the 
ages. It is only the Saviour who claims to come 
from the bosom of the Eternal Father, who can be so 
lifted up that he gives promise of drawing all men to 
him. When we see that behef in such a religion, in 
such a Saviour, though mingled with puerilities, 
superstitions, and absurdities, has proved the might- 
iest force in the moral universe, alone not yielding to 
the law of decline and exhaustion to which all other 
forces have succumbed, it becomes in the highest 
degree probable that mankind needed such a religion, 
such a Saviour ; and, if so, the miracles that attended 
its promulgation and his mission were in themselves 
antecedently probable. 

I close by noticing two objections that have been 
often urged, and with no little plausibility. To some 
minds miracles are incredible because they seem an 
afterthought, and imply some initial imperfection in 
the Creator's work. What was wisely made could 
not have needed repair. What was fitly planned 
could not have demanded remedy and re-adjusting. 
I answer, What was made and placed at the head of 



Il6 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

this lower world was a race o£ free agents, with the 
unrestricted choice of good and evil. What was 
planned was a system by which, with or without help 
from a higher power, that race was to work out its 
own destiny. It may be that such a race, however 
nobly endowed, if less than divine, could not but try 
all experiments and sound all depths of moral evil ; 
could not but lapse into a depraved and morally help- 
less condition from which it could be rescued only by 
an arm let down from heaven. It may be that in the 
very nature of things the kingdom of ultimate and 
universal righteousness, of which the Messianic proph- 
ecies give the foreshining, must needs have had its 
sunken foundation laid in such wrecks of humanity as 
the waves of time have submerged. If so, Christianity, 
with its apparatus of superhuman manifestations and 
events, was not a divine afterthought, but a divine 
forethought, an essential part of the initial plan of 
creation, — a plan by which, as the first Adam was 
the progenitor of a race of sinners that shall, in God's 
own time, run out and leave only its history, the 
second Adam should become the progenitor of a race, 
born not of the flesh, but of the Spirit, of the increase 
of which there shall be no end till time shall lapse 
into eternity. 

Finally, it has been represented as incredible that 
in the press and throng of habitable worlds that gem 
our night heavens, rank beyond rank, in realms of 
telescopic vision which even our figures cannot 
overtake, still less our th-ought conceive, our little 
planet should have been specially signalized by a stu- 



OTHER WORLDS THAN OURS. II J 

pendous theophany,-wkh its attendant pageantry of 
prophecy, sign, and marvel. In reply, I would ask, 
Who knows that our planet has been thus specially 
signalized ? Undoubtedly its spiritual, no less than 
its physical, history, has its peculiar features ; for Infi- 
nite Wisdom has had no need to repeat itself in the 
worlds. But how know we but that in some form or 
way a theophany has had its place in all realms and 
orders of spiritual being ; that in methods analogous 
to those recorded in the Christian Scriptures God has 
in all parts of his creation made known his being, 
providence, and righteous retribution ; and that if 
there has been, as there certainly may have been, in 
other portions of the universe sin, spiritual defection, 
soul-peril, he has interposed in mercy like that in- 
carnate on Calvary, and has won back to loyalty and 
duty his children in the stars beyond Arcturus and 
Orion no less than among the sons of men .? Enough 
for us that we own what he has done for our fallen 
race. In the eternity that lies before us, it may be that 
the ransomed from among men will be immeasurably 
outnumbered by the harps and tongues from worlds 
to us unknown that shall swell the self-same redemp- 
tion song. 



LECTURE VI. 

Paul's testimony to Christ's resurrection the earliest 

EXTANT. — its SOURCE AND VALIDITY. — ACCOUNTS OF 
THE RESURRECTION IN THE GOSPELS. — THE APOSTLES 
BELIEVED IN CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. — THE CHURCH 

BUILT UPON IT. — Christ's supposed reappearance 

NOT AN hallucination. — NOT REVIVAL FROM A SWOON. — 
USES OF THE RESURRECTION. — ITS PROOF GROWS WITH 
TIME. 

"^ I ^HE earliest written mention of the resurrection 
•^ of Jesus Christ which has come down to us 
IS by St. Paul, in his first epistle to the Corin- 
thians, — an epistle on whose genuineness there rests 
not the shadow of a doubt, and which was written 
some twenty-three or twenty-four years after the 
crucifixion. In this epistle Paul speaks of the 
resurrection of Christ as the fundamental fact on 
which repose alike his preaching and the faith of 
those to whom he writes. It is worthy of the most 
emphatic notice, also, that he does not treat this 
fact as needing proof, but employs it by way of argu- 
ment, as of itself established and admitted beyond 
question. There were, it seems, among the Corin- 
thians, some who had vague and loose notions about 
the life to come ; denied the resurrection of the dead, 
or the renewal of personal identity after death ; and 



PAUL ON THE RESURRECTION. II9 

probably, in oppositioruto such ultra-realistic views of 
the resurrection as Paul himself disclaims, maintained 
ultra-spiritualistic notions which refined away indi- 
vidual immortality, and left the disembodied spirit to 
be reabsorbed into the soul of the universe. To meet 
this error, Paul plants himself on the broken sepul- 
chre in the garden, and takes as the basis of a masterly 
structure of conclusive argument the resurrection of 
Jesus as a universally received and unquestioned fact. 
He rehearses a list of witnesses, as if he had taken 
pains to examine the matter for himself. The risen 
Jesus, he says, was seen by Peter, by James, and by 
the apostles collectively. He certainly must have 
learned this directly from Peter and James, when, 
several years before, he went to Jerusalem to confer 
with them about his new faith, and was authorized by 
them to become its preacher ; for if they had been 
silent about the resurrection then, and afterward pro- 
fessed to believe it, to a man of Paul's clear and culti- 
vated mind the story would have seemed a fabrication 
unworthy of credit. 

This visit of Paul to Peter and James took place 
not more than ten, probably not more than six, years 
after the crucifixion ; and thus early Christ's resur- 
rection must have been the fixed belief, real or pre- 
tended, of his disciples. A myth could not have 
grown up in so short a time. What was professed or 
believed then could have been no other than a story 
grafted immediately upon the crucifixion, and must 
have been either a fact, an illusion, or an imposture. 

Paul farther mentions the appearance of the risen 



I20 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Jesus to more than five hundred brethren at once, 
and says that the greater part of them were still 
living, though some had died. This certainly looks 
as if he were acquainted with many of the five hun- 
dred, and it is hardly possible that in a matter of so 
grave importance he should not have examined and 
weighed their testimony. 

Not only in this chapter, but throughout the four 
epistles that are admitted to be genuine by the most 
rationalistic critics, the resurrection of Christ is re- 
ferred to as the one salient fact of the Christian his- 
tory. The reader of these epistles cannot doubt that 
Paul believed it as firmly as he believed his own 
existence, and that he wrote to converts who had no 
thought of calling it in question. 

There are not a few to whom Paul's testimony is 
the most weighty that can be adduced. He was a 
man of singular acuteness, and of large and high cult- 
ure ; no man of his time was his superior, if his 
equal; and some who are no mean judges of their 
fellow-men look upon him as the greatest man that 
God ever made. He had been a vehement opposer 
and persecutor of the new faith. On that route lay 
office, honor, influence, wealth. He chose penury, 
contempt, the prison, the stocks, stripes, perpetual 
peril of death, — and Christ ; and he was not ashamed 
of his choice. Only the strongest conviction could 
have started and sustained him on this new career, 
and conviction with a man like him meant impreg- 
nable proof, — solid and substantial reasons. In the 
circle in which he moved before his conversion, Chris- 



EARLY BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION. 121 

tianity was held in ^^ least as low esteem as Mor- 
monism is with us ; and for such a man as he to 
become a Christian was as strange and abnormal as 
it would be for one of our divines, or judges, or 
princely merchants to join the motley community of 
Brigham Young. He had not a friend who was not 
ashamed of him, and whose respect for him was not 
changed into contempt. To face all this, must he 
not have had a belief tantamount to knowledge .'' 

From the Acts of the Apostles, — which, whatever 
slurs may be cast upon it, undeniably represents the 
general tone, drift, and scope of the apostolic preach- 
ing, — it appears that the resurrection of Jesus was 
proclaimed within a few weeks after his death, in a 
discourse which won a multitude of converts in the city 
where he died ; and it is hardly possible that among 
them there were not many who had seen him on the 
cross. Certainly the story was on this occasion put to 
the severest test possible. If there existed any means 
of refuting it, they were close at hand. The neces- 
sary inference is that the belief was founded either on 
fact, on a delusion which had a strange resemblance 
to reality, or on a deception planned and carried 
through with the most consummate dexterity. From 
that time onward the apostles and their associates so 
uniformly gave this story a foremost place in their 
preaching, that we might not unfittingly call theirs 
the Gospel of the Resurrection. 

We have the most ample proof, which none can call 
in question, that this event was the universal belief of 
Christians long before either of the Gospels was 

6 



122 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

written ; and had neither of them ever been written, 
this behef would be none the less an indisputable fact 
in the history of the Church. But in the Gospels 
alone we have detailed narratives of the event. 
These narratives, as I said in a former Lecture, 
though not by any means coincident, fit into one 
another, each supplying details which the others omit, 
but for which they leave room. If all four of the 
evangelists were in Jerusalem at the time (as they 
probably were), each undoubtedly related such occur- 
rences as came within his own cognizance ; and the 
four harmonize as the stories of four commanders of 
divisions in a battle, or of four witnesses of the trans- 
actions of any eventful day would harmonize. It is 
alleged, however, that there are some irreconcilable 
discrepancies. While to me, as I have said, they are 
not irreconcilable, yet, if they were so, they would 
rather confirm than shake my faith in the reality of 
the event described. It is to me astonishing that 
there should not have been such discrepancies. It is 
the uniform tendency of an event that strongly moves 
the imagination and the emotional nature to throw 
accessory circumstances into the background, to con- 
fuse and blur the memory with regard to them, and 
thus to generate narratives irreconcilable in their de- 
tails. A case in point occurs to me in Roman history. 
The history of the Second Punic War was written by 
several authors, whose narratives, entire or in part, 
have been preserved. They all tell the story of ten 
prisoners of war whom Hannibal sent to Rome, 
bound by an oath that they would return into cap- 



ADMISSIONS OF SCEPTICS. 123 

tivity if they failed tQ_j>btain an exchange of prisoners. 
One of them, at the outset, pretended to have for- 
gotten something, returned to the Carthaginian camp 
as if to look for it, and then rejoined the other nine 
on the route to Rome. He claimed to have been ab- 
solved of his oath by this constructive return, in 
accordance with its letter, but in violation of its spirit. 
One account says that he was sent back from Rome 
to Hannibal in chains ; another, that he remained at 
Rome, but was degraded for life from the rights of 
citizenship ; and there are vestiges of still a third 
version of the story.* The flagrancy of the crime, in 
an age when good faith was held inviolably sacred at 
Rome, and when its infraction was regarded with in- 
tense loathing, so impressed the public mind as to 
throw the actual doom of the perjured man into the 
shadow of his own guilt. Not a few instances of the 
same kind, in which, in the record of momentous or 
startling events, accessory facts that must have been 
publicly known have been transmitted in different 
forms, might be quoted from both ancient and modern 
history. The principle is an important one. I see 
no need of applying it to the narratives of the resur- 
rection ; but, were there need, it would be to the 
fullest extent applicable. 

That the apostles and their associates believed in 
their Lord's resurrection hardly needs proof. It is 
admitted by Renan, who expressly says that without 
this belief they would never have incurred the labors, 
hardships, persecutions, and perils, incident to the 
* See Appendix, note H. 



124 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

founding of the Christian Church. Strauss writes to 
the same purpose : " Faith in the resurrection of 
Jesus is a fact of prime historical importance ; for 
without it one cannot see how a Christian com- 
munity would ever have been formed ; " and, again, 
"There can be no doubt that the apostle Paul had 
heard from Peter, James, and others beside, that Jesus 
had appeared to them, and that all these persons and 
the five hundred brethren were fully convinced that 
they had seen Jesus living, who had been dead." 
Baur, who has as little Christian faith as either 
Strauss or Renan, but whose surpassing erudition 
and critical acuteness cannot be denied, writes in 
the same vein : " History must hold fast to this fact, 
that for the faith of the disciples the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ was a certain and immovable truth, and 
that it is only in this faith that Christianity found a 
solid basis for its whole historical development." In 
the face of such admissions from the chief pundits of 
scepticism, there is no need of our doing any thing 
more to establish the fact that the apostles and their 
associates believed in the actual resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead. Nor do these authors cast any 
doubt on the supposed appearances of Jesus as having 
been recorded in good faith by the evangelists. In- 
deed, it hardly needs to be said that, if they honestly 
believed the story, they were honest in their relation 
of the grounds on which they believed it. Pascal goes 
too far when he says, " I readily believe stories whose 
witnesses offer themselves to death for their truth ; " 
but, while even such witnesses may be grossly mis- 



THE RESURRECTION NOT A DELUSION. 1 25 

taken, we must adiiu^their truthfulness, and suppose 
that they think they saw all that they pretend to have 
seen. 

The two hypotheses which divide the sceptical world 
on this subject are, first, that Jesus really died, and 
that the apostles were under an hallucination in sup- 
posing that they saw him alive ; and, secondly, that 
he did not die, but fell into a swoon from which 
he recovered, and thus actually reappeared after his 
crucifixion. 

We will first test the theory of hallucination. On 
this theory the body of Jesus was somewhere. Where 
was it .'' Who removed it from the sepulchre .'* Who 
could have done this 1 A great stone was laid on the 
mouth of the sepulchre, and Roman sentinels guarded 
its approach. But suppose that the stone was not too 
heavy to be easily moved, and that the Roman sentry 
was a mere figment, or that the soldiers slept on their 
watch, or suffered themselves to be bribed, — who took 
the body t Not the disciples ; for if they had taken 
it, they would not have believed in the resurrection. 
Not the Jewish or Roman authorities ; for they would 
have produced the body to refute the story of the 
resurrection. TertuUian quotes those who say that 
the gardener removed it, to prevent the trampling 
down of his lettuce-beds by those who visited the 
sepulchre.* But he could hardly have done this 
without the order of his master ; he could not have 
removed the body far ; it could have been easily 

* " liic est, quern hortulanus detraxit, ne lactucae sua; frequentia 
commeantium la^derentur." 



126 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

found ; nay, he himself would have produced it in view 
of the reward which would have been readily paid to 
negative the growing rumor of the resurrection. 
Moreover, the removal of the body while the grave- 
clothes were left behind is inconceivable, unless it 
were a contrivance to substantiate the story of the 
resurrection : such a stratagem would have been 
possible only for those who were going to circulate 
the story, that is, for the disciples ; and we have seen 
that the supposition of fraud on their part is utterly 
untenable. Renan, with characteristic frankness, con- 
fesses himself unable to solve this mystery, yet sug- 
gests that Joseph of Arimathea may have procured 
the removal. But Joseph either was or was not a 
thoroughly sincere and steadfast disciple of Jesus. If 
he was a disciple, he must have taken upon himself 
the risks incurred by every professed believer in the 
resurrection, which he could not have believed, if he 
had surreptitiously procured the report of it. If, on 
the other hand, his allegiance to Christ was not gen- 
uine and stable, he would certainly have sought peace 
with his brethren of the Sanhedrim by aiding in the 
detection of the imposture. In fine, there was no 
party, there was no individual man, who had any thing 
to gain, any possible purpose to advance, by stealing 
the body of Jesus and keeping it concealed. This 
difficulty stands, then, immovable in the way of the 
theory of hallucination. But we will waive it, to ex- 
amine the theory in other aspects. 

Visual hallucinations have their laws and their 
limits. They occur rather by night than by day, 



REPEATED APPEARANCES OF CHRIST. I27 

They are not apt ±0- recur under altered circum- 
stances. They affect individuals rather than groups 
of men. They do not run at the same moment through 
large bodies of men in broad daylight, so that five 
hundred persons falsely think that they see the same 
unreal man or object at the same time. They are not 
accompanied by imagined long conversations, by im- 
agined serial transactions with their object, by imag- 
ined sittings at the same table, and receiving food 
from his hands. Had Mary Magdalene's story been the 
only one, it would certainly be conceivable that, in the 
misty dawn and with tear-dimmed eyes, she mistook 
the gardener for Jesus. But it is impossible to apply 
the same solution to the supposed separate appearances 
to the eleven and to different groups of disciples. It 
is impossible that Thomas should have been deceived 
as to the reality of the wound-marks ; for uniform ex- 
perience shows that the hand corrects the errors of 
the eye. There could have been no delusion in the 
conversations put o"i record, — in Christ's expounding 
the Scriptures, calling forth the expressions of love 
from the disciple who had denied him, giving his 
parting commands to those who were to go out into 
the world to preach his Gospel ; nor yet when his 
disciples thought that he was sitting with them at 
their noonday meal, partaking of it himself, and dis- 
pensing the viands with his own hands. Least of all 
could the five hundred brethren have been deceived 
in mass, so that they should have imagined his pres- 
ence, when where they thought he stood there was 
only empty air. Nor must it be forgotten that, ac- 



128 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

cording to this hypothesis, the only ground for the 
strangest series of delusions on record was the mistake 
of a woman whose previous insanity (for the seven 
demons must denote a most deplorable condition of 
mind, whether from natural causes or possession by 
evil spirits) would have rendered her the least credible 
witness in the whole company of the disciples. She 
was the only person who, unless Jesus really appeared, 
saw any thing out of which the phantasm could have 
taken shape. The apparition came to all the others 
when they were on the road, or assembled in the upper 
chamber, or fishing on the lake, — when there could 
have been no doubtful appearance like that which is 
said to have occasioned Mary Magdalene's mistake. 
If any one part of this theory is weaker than the rest, 
the misapprehension from which the story is alleged 
to have grown and spread is the weakest of all. 

We pass now to the theory of suspended animation 
and apparent death, followed by resuscitation. To this 
we encounter at the outset what might seem to any 
person of sound ethical discernment a fatal objection, 
in the moral character of Jesus. If he had not died, 
he knew it, and he himself invented the figment of his 
resurrection. How would this story tally with the 
character of any of the great men with whom we so 
often see him named by those who admit his purity 
and excellence, yet deny the tokens of his divine Son- 
ship } If Socrates had swooned and not died on 
drinking the hemlock, and then tried to make his 
friends believe that he had really died and come to 
life again, think you that he would stand before an 



J 



THE RESURRECTION NOT A FRAUD. 1 29 

admiring world orr^ie pedestal of moral elevation 
which he now occupies ? Was it possible for him, 
being the man he undoubtedly was, to lend himself to 
such an infamous fraud ? What shall we say, then, of 
him in whose robe of righteousness unbelievers have 
striven in vain to detect rent or seam ? If we are to 
judge of a man by his previous character, under cir- 
cumstances that do not carry with them their own 
full interpretation, and if Jesus was but a man and 
no more, certainly no man ever trod the earth who in 
precept and example presents a more perfectly trans- 
parent honesty and truthfulness, — none whose whole 
aim in living and dying was so manifestly the pro- 
motion of virtue, — none who has shown so intense 
an abhorrence of shams and falsities. 

But we will not take shelter under his character. 
We will try the issue as if he had been morally capa- 
ble of enacting a falsehood. It is said that death by 
crucifixion was very slow, frequently not occurring 
till the second day, or even later, and that at the end 
of six hours there is at least a strong probability that 
life was not extinct. To this suggestion the first 
answer is that the Roman executioners were accus- 
tomed to this mode of punishment, and knew the 
signs of death ; that they were not the men to let 
their victims escape from their hands with their work 
but half accomplished ; that in this case they did not 
see sure signs of death in the two malefactors, though 
from the narrative we may infer that to an unprac- 
tised eye they seemed already dead ; and that nothing 
but absolute certainty on the part of the soldiers would 

6* 



130 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

have deterred them from employing on Jesus the bar- 
barous mode of disablement to which they had recourse 
in the case of the malefactors. Then, again, we have 
reason to believe that crucifixion inflicted fatal injury, 
though often not immediately fatal. It could hardly 
fail, in the first few hours, to produce a congestion of 
the vital current, of which death at no great distance 
of time would be the inevitable result, — a conges- 
tion, too, which would of itself render spontaneous 
revival from a swoon impossible. 

From the nature of the case we should, indeed, 
have on record very few instances of the recovery of 
crucified persons. I remember but one — there may 
be others — and that is a case which, though much 
employed by non-believers in the reality of the resur- 
rection, bears with great weight of argument against 
their hypothesis. I refer to the case described by 
Josephus in his autobiography. He says that he was 
one day sent by Titus to Thecoa, which was within 
sight of Jerusalem, about twelve miles distant from 
it ; that on his return he found many captives cruci- 
fied, three of them persons with whom he had been 
well acquainted ; that he procured of Titus leave to 
have these persons taken down, and subjected to the 
most careful treatment ; and that two of them died 
under the physician's hands, while the third recovered. 
From this account it would seem that the crucifixion 
had not begun when Josephus left the city, and the 
narrative would lead us to suppose that he was absent 
but a few hours, certainly not overnight ; yet two of 
these men had sunk beyond recovery, and the third sur- 



REALITY OF THE RESURRECTION. 13I 

vived only under theTTfost skilful treatment accessible.* 
The inference is that fatal lesion of the vital organs was 
wont to ensue even from the earlier stages of this hor- 
rible punishment. Then, too, the Roman soldiers, with 
characteristic barbarity, were intent, in the case of 
Jesus, on exploring the seat of life ; and the serous fluid 
that followed the spear wound indicated the puncture 
of the pericardium, which, if not already dead, he could 
not have survived. Even had not the inevitably fatal 
wound been given, if there had still remained inter- 
mittent fiickerings of life, these must have been 
extinguished in the close, mephitic air of the tomb. 
Moreover, if continued respiration had been pos- 
sible, whence the strength that enabled him after 
thirty-six hours of fasting, bleeding, fainting, to raise 
from within the heavy stone, and so to reappear in 
the eyes of his friends as to seem not snatched from 
the jaws of the grave, but Conqueror of death } The 
double walk between Jerusalem and Emmaus on that 
very day, and all the traces that we have of him for the 
ensuing forty days, indicate not slow and painful con- 
valescence, but at least the wonted vigor of his former 
life. Bodily weakness would have rendered him utterly 
incapable of playing a part in such a drama as awaited 
him for its chief actor. It would have betrayed itself 
to the disciples. It would have thrown him upon their 
anxious care, instead of casting them at his feet in 
wondering awe. The disciples were not the fools 
they are commonly assumed to have been by those 
who account for every thing that looks strange in the 
* See Appendix, note G. 



132 . CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Gospel narrative by their feeble credulity. They were 
sensible men ; disciplined by a rough, hard life ; familial 
with the appearances and the reality of things, and 
amply able to know the difference between one who 
had barely evaded and one who had surmounted 
death. The latter they believed Jesus to be. They 
had no interest which in the former capacity could 
have been served by proclaiming him as their Lord. 
To protect him from further persecution, to nourish 
him in secret, and to continue their kind regard for 
him, was the utmost that could have been expected of 
them. That they should throw away all that this 
world had for them in the present and future, to 
sustain any baseless pretensions of his or of their own 
about him, would have been sheer madness. 

The improbability of the solution which we are 
now considering seems still more glaring, when we 
remember that Jerusalem was filled with keen eyes 
and active brains that were implacably hostile to 
Jesus and his memory ; that of these the Sadducees 
at least had neither superstition nor credulity, while 
the Pharisees can have had very little (hypocrites sel- 
dom have much) ; and that the same interests which 
had succeeded in bringing Jesus to the cross were 
still more concerned in crushing out this rumor of 
the resurrection. If it was merely resuscitation, there 
must have been numerous ways ■ in which the real 
fact, if concealed by friends, would have betrayed 
itself to unfriendly eyes, or have got abroad in the 
gossip which can no more be muffled or choked in 
any community, than you can smother fire with linen 
garments. 



rilE ASCENSION. I33 

Still farther, if Cfc-ist's was merely a case of sus- 
pended and renewed animation under ordinary physi- 
cal laws, death was still before him, and friends, or 
enemies, or both, must have known when, where, and 
how he died. If he lingered on for years in retire- 
ment and obscurity, his disciples knew it ; they knew 
that he was no longer the man he had been ; and he 
would have been a dead weight on their faith and 
their zeal. If he died early, they knew it, and if he 
had not lived imbecile years enough to cloud the 
memory of his better days and to eclipse his fame, 
they would have recorded his final departure and done 
honor to his sepulchre ; for, though they believed his 
resurrection, they yet could not have anticipated what 
we so clearly see, — the fitness that he should not die 
again : his death would have seemed to them no more 
strange than the second death of Lazarus or of the 
young man of Nain. In fine, his death could not but 
have been a known event and a matter of record. 
The very fact that he disappeared, and "no man 
knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day," adds a strong 
probability to the story of the resurrection, inasmuch 
as it makes the ascension probable ; while, on the 
other hand, the ascension postulates the resurrection 
as its antecedent, and has its meaning, its appropri- 
ateness, its didactic power, its essential place in the 
Christian history, only as the sequel, crown, and con- 
summation of the former miracle. The ascension, 
inconceivable as a delusion on the part of the disci- 
ples ; as a figment, beyond the easy scope of their 
very prosaic imaginations, adding gratuitously to the 



134 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 



heavy draft they were already making on the faith 
of their dupes, and contributing no one element of 
strength to their cause, — was yet the very mode of 
leaving the world which, in the retrospect, seems 
alone in harmony with a passage through life and the 
death-shadow like Christ's. It was fitting that he 
who, alone of all those born of woman, had "power to 
lay down his life and power to take it again," should 
not even seem to succumb to his once vanquished foe, 
should leave upon the earth no trophies for death to 
boast, but should pass on to his heavenly throne, 

*' His human form dissolved on high 
In its own radiancy." 

We have thus seen that the undoubted belief of the 
primitive disciples in their Lord's resurrection can be 
accounted for neither by delusion nor by imposture, 
but only by the actual occurrence of the event. It is 
worthy of emphatic remark that no alleged fact in the 
early history of Christianity has had so prominent a 
place as this, or has so constantly invited test, inquiry, 
cavil. The church in all time has been ready to 
stand or fall upon this record. The resurrection was 
commemorated from the beginning by the use of the 
first day of the week for Christian worship, at the 
outset supplementing, then superseding, the Jewish 
sabbath. Its anniversary was the earliest of the 
Christian festivals, and must have been so observed 
in the apostolic age ; for in the next generation we 
find record of a controversy in which primitive usage 
was appealed to, as to the proper time for celebrating 



USES OF THE RESURRECTION. 135 

the resurrection, whether always on Sunday, or on 
the day succeeding the paschal full moon, whether on 
Sunday or not.* These commemorations might be 
cited, did we need them, as historical proofs ; for 
there are no historical records so absolutely infallible 
as rites or festivals commemorative of single events. 
It is impossible that such observances should not 
have originated in real or supposed facts, and equally 
impossible that they should retain their form and 
change their meaning. I refer to them now, however, 
not for their direct evidential value, but to show that 
this alleged event, from the prominence thus given to 
it, has always presented a broad mark for attack, and 
has challenged the keenest weapons of the opposite 
camp. I have exhibited to you the most and best that 
these assailants have been able to effect. They have 
not succeeded in casting any doubt on the genuine- 
ness and sincerity of the primitive belief in the resur- 
rection, nor have they produced any counter-hypothesis 
other than these which we have seen to be so baseless 
and flimsy. In view of the controversy, we are enti- 
tled to say that no fact in history rests on more solid 
and substantial evidence than this. 

But we may be held to the Horatian rule, " Let not 
a God intervene, unless there be an occasion worthy 
of his intervention." The uses of the resurrection 
may be called in question ; and though God is not 
bound to account to man for what he does, still we 
may reasonably expect that man shall understand in 
part what he does for man, and those who deny the 

* See Appendix, note I. 



136 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

resurrection may justly claim that we should show 
how and why it was needed. It may be said, The 
resurrection does not prove immortality, and it is this 
which we want to have proved. I answer that it 
demonstrates all that we need to know, in order to be 
sure of immortality. Death is the only obstacle in 
the way of our belief of eternal life. Could we follow 
with our apprehensive faculties those who die, and see 
them living on, we should have no doubt that they 
would live for ever. The gulf once safely passed, the 
heavenly shore once reached, we should have no 
farther fear of the suspension of being. Now the 
resurrection of Jesus proves that death is not destruc- 
tion ; that if a man die, he may live again. Jesus did 
not return to life ; but he resumed his dead body to 
show that he had not ceased to live, and that no soul 
born of God can ever die ; and we know not how 
this could have been so clearly shown in any other 
way. 

The resurrection was also needed to put the seal 
upon Christ's example, and to demonstrate the safety 
and the wisdom of following it. Whatever purposes 
in the divine counsels his death may have served, his 
earthly life, without the resurrection, was an utter fail- 
ure. If we may in our thought listen to the conver- 
sation of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, 
it might have run in this wise, " To what purpose is 
this life, wasted, thrown away } A little yielding would 
have been to him an infinite gain. Let him at the out- 
set have had a wise reference to his own interest ; let 
him have made a few harmless concessions to popular 



THE EXAMPLE OF THE RESURRECTION. 137 

tastes and prejudices-r let him have stepped aside now 
and then instead of marching straight on in the face 
and eyes of what he deemed wrong and evil : he might 
have gained a name and influence ; he might have 
been efficient as a reformer ; he might have raised up 
a strong sect among the very rulers and Pharisees ; he 
might have lived to see his cause triumphant, and have 
passed away in old age with universal reverence and 
honor. But now all that has come of his uncompro- 
mising rigidness of principle has been a scanty, lessen- 
ing and discouraged following, the general hatred and 
scorn, a hard lot, a barbarous doom, a felon's death." 
This was sound reasoning on the day when he slept 
the death-slumber in Joseph's garden ; and, had he 
not awoke from that slumber, it would be sound 
reasoning now, and the best morality of our race 
would still be comprehended in that incomparable 
maxim of worldly wisdom, " Be not righteous over- 
much ; for why shouldest thou destroy thyself .'' " 
When the powers of evil have hunted Jesus to his 
destruction, and laid him low in the dust, they cer- 
tainly have for the time the upper hand. But how is 
all this changed when, like the midsummer sun on the 
verge of the Arctic circle, Jesus just dips beneath the 
horizon, and lo ! from the very twilight of his setting 
bursts the glorious dawn of his resurrection day ! It 
now appears that the power of life and death is not in 
the hands of moral evil or its abettors ; that they can- 
not kill ; that virtue, integrity, piety, live on un- 
harmed through death, as asbestos in fire ; and that 
it makes no manner of difference whether the right 



138 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

seem to succeed in this world or not, while it has the 
eternal years of God for its ascendancy and triumph. 
The resurrection has thus made Christ's example 
availing for all who pursue the right with earthly and 
human influence on the adverse side. His path, had 
it stopped short at the sepulchre, would have won no 
follower ; but now that it stretches on in a line of liv- 
ing light through the valley of the death-shadow, it 
has drawn a multitude that no man can number of 
elect and loyal souls to follow him in his death to sin, 
that they may follow him in heaven and for ever. 

But it may be asked. Why should the revelation of 
the eternal life have been given in this dramatic form ? 
Why might not a verbal assurance of immortality, with 
unmistakable tokens that it came from God, have met 
the needs of human faith and virtue equally with this 
scenic transaction, which has given rise to so much 
doubt and cavil t Why should a physical testimony 
have been borne to a spiritual truth ? I reply that 
immortality, and especially resurrection, that is, the 
essential identity of the being that lives for ever with 
that which lived and died on earth, is primarily a 
physical truth, and may therefore admit, or even 
demand external, visible proof. If eternal life be the 
destiny of man, it is because God has made the vital 
organism in man indestructible by material forces. 
Had it been made destructible by those forces, there 
might have been re-creation, not immortality. Now, 
God has shown us in the resurrection of Christ that 
human life is not destructible by the agencies that 
destroy the body, and has thus literally made the 



NEEDS OF THE EMOTIONAL NATURE. 139 

eternal life manifest-4n the flesh, and more clearly 
manifest than mere words could have made it. 

Still further, verbal revelation addresses the reason 
alone ; but in the matter under discussion the imagi- 
nation and the emotional nature are profoundly con- 
cerned. They are concerned, are influential, and often 
dominant on all subjects of religious belief and evi- 
dence. Moreover, they are apprehensive faculties no 
less than reason. They have their own tests of truth, 
no less authentic and trustworthy than those employed 
by the reason. The dogmas which they, in their legit- 
imate exercise, repudiate are not true, though logically 
proved ; the dogmas which they postulate have in their 
favor a strong prestige prior to proof. The naturalism 
which excludes the Christ-element from religion, and 
reduces it to abstract propositions and principles, finds 
no point of attachment to humanity except through the 
intellect. The imagination spurns it. The affections 
shiver in the face of it. 

Now these portions of our nature have their special 
needs and cravings with reference to death, and what 
may lie or may not lie beyond it. There is in many 
minds a shrinking, even to horror, from the physical 
phenomena and accessories of death, — the ebbing pulse, 
the shortening breath, the sad surroundings, the con- 
scious nearness of the plunge into an untried state of 
being, the solitary passage through the death-shadow. 
It is a feeling which, entirely independent of belief, 
cannot be allayed by mere belief. This condition of 
the imaginative or emotional nature can be soothed 
and transformed only by influences of its own order. 



140 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 



and such are those flowing from a scenic display of 
the conquest over Death on the very stage where he 
is wont to move in kingly guise. All these acces- 
sories of the dissolution of the body — in their mildest 
forms so appalling — were clustered in their direst 
aspects about the cross and burial of our Lord ; and 
they are all transfigured in the light of the resurrec- 
tion morning, — symbols no longer of death, but of 
undying life, — no longer of the soul unclothed, but 
clothed upon, — no longer of the dismanthng of the 
earthly tabernacle, but of the opening portals of the 
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
Who that has watched by the Christian deathbed has 
not felt moved to dwell in converse and in prayer on 
the place where the Lord lay, and witnessed the sweet 
peace and the hope surmounting fear, as the dying 
believer has thought of that far-off sepulchre in 
Judaea while he was sinking into his own grave ? 

The sensibilities which crave this support are not 
confined to weaker minds, though, if they were, we 
should expect to find them only the more tenderly 
cared for by Infinite Love. They are often keenest 
and most craving in the very minds that might seem 
most capable of satisfying themselves by abstract 
truth. I know of no more explicit and touching con- 
fession of them than in the words of Dr. Arnold, 
whose firm faith and clear reason might have seemed 
sufficient, if they ever are sufficient. He says, in 
writing about the death of one of his children : 
" Nothing afforded us so much comfort, when shrink- 
ing from the outward accompaniments of death, — 



EVIDENCE STRENGTHENED BY TIME, 14I 

the grave, the grave-clothes, the loneliness, — as the 
thought that all these had been around our Lord 
himself, round him who died and is alive for ever- 
more." 

These needs become solid arguments, when we 
are reasoning about Him who knoweth our frame, 
and who, as a Father, pitieth his children. If from 
the resurrection of Christ spring a consolation, peace, 
and hope which even his words could not give, we 
have added confirmation of no little force for that 
crowning miracle of power and mercy on which the 
Church is built, on which the faith of these Christian 
ages has rested with a unanimity of consent that can 
be affirmed of no other truth or fact appertaining to 
our rehgion or its history. 

One closing thought, which impresses me with 
great force. The evidence of our Lord's resurrection, 
so far from being impaired by time, has gained 
strength with the lapse of ages. I think that even 
with regard to a common man such proof as we pos- 
sess would constrain our belief in his resurrection, 
yet not without a vague reluctance, a rebellion of 
reason against reason, of strong opposing probabilities 
against overwhelmingly strong testimony. But sup- 
pose that the man whose resurrection was thus 
attested were not a common, but a unique man ; one 
in whom had been witnessed from infancy to death 
an unequalled purity and loveliness ; one whose words 
had seemed to those who heard them as utterances 
from heaven, and with an authority to which men had 
instinctively yielded as divine ; one who had not his 



142 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 



like in the whole antecedent history of the world, — 
then, that death should not have had the same power 
over him as over other men would not seem so very 
improbable. Suppose, still further, that, as the cen- 
turies roll on, this man, said to have risen from the 
dead, proves to be the author of a new epoch for 
humanity ; that his influence broadens and deepens 
from age to age ; that the very tokens of his ignominy 
become more glorious than the badges of royalty, and 
the effigy of his death as a felon-slave is made the 
most precious ornament of crowns and sceptres ; in 
fine, that not only God in his revealed purpose, but men 
— his opposers no less than his adherents — give him 
a name above every name, — then does his culminating 
career on the way to universal empire add perpetually 
new attestation to the record of his resurrection from 
the tomb and his ascension on high. 



LECTURE VII. 

ALLEGED DEFICIENCIES OF CHRISTIANITY. — ITS COMPLETE- 
NESS AS TO INDIVIDUAL NEEDS. — REASONS FOR ITS 
SILENCE. — ITS SILENCE A PROOF OF ITS DIVINITY. — 
ITS TREATMENT OF COURAGE. — OF PATRIOTISM. — OF 
FRIENDSHIP. — SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE FROM TESTI- 
MONY. 

TN my Lectures thus far I have given you an outline 
•*• of the grounds on which the testimony of the 
evangeHsts as to the Hfe and character of Jesus is 
worthy of confidence. I have shown you also that 
this testimony is greatly confirmed by the contents of 
the record, especially by the consistency of the mar- 
vellous and else incredible portions of the narrative 
with the facts which no one ventures to call in ques- 
tion. But were these contents defective, — did they, 
while they profess to transmit the life and words of 
an all-sufficient and divinely appointed teacher in 
morals and religion, omit many things which might 
properly be expected of such a teacher, — did they 
present, on the magnificent substructure of a miracu- 
lous theophany, only a paltry, fragmentary, and unfin- 
ished work, — these defects would reflect back doubts 
upon the testimony, and, if they could not annul its 
evidential weight, they would at least impair its value ; 
for a religious record which fails to satisfy our needs 



144 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

is not worth our investigation or defence. Accord- 
ingly the omissions, the blanks, the lactuicB in Chris- 
tianity and its records, have been strongly urged in 
abatement of its claims. I propose to present them 
in the opposite light, and to draw added proof of the 
genuineness and authenticity of the Gospel record 
from what it does not contain. 

As to the range and quantity of its professed reve- 
lations, the Gospels certainly contain less than any 
other sacred books with which we are acquainted. 
They do less to satisfy the curiosity of those who 
would extend their knowledge beyond the normal 
scope of human research. They are silent on many 
subjects on which the Koran and the Mormon scrip- 
tures enter into minute detail. They do not approach 
the brink of the depths sounded in the sacred books 
of India and Persia. They have not satisfied many 
Christian sects, which have built outside of them 
cumbrous systems, bodies of divinity, — often fitly so 
called for their lack of soul. These have, indeed, 
derived their materials from the Christian Scriptures, 
but less from Christ's own teachings than from the 
Pauline epistles, including that to the Hebrews, 
whether it be Paul's or not. It cannot be denied that 
the Christianity of Christ, as recorded in the Gospels 
from his lips and life, is exceedingly simple, — even 
meagre, if estimated by the number and diversity of 
its topics. I believe the Christianity of the Pauline 
epistles to be equally simple. It is merely the appli- 
cation of the plain doctrines and precepts of Christ 
to the exigencies, questionings, and controversies of 



CHRISTIANITY MEETS MAN'S NEEDS. 1 45 

converts who had a great deal of Judaism or heathen- 
ism still clinging to them ; and many of the technical 
terms, which from these epistles have been imported 
into the religious phraseology of modern Protestant 
churches, and have given rise to minute dogmatic 
subtilties without number, were, as used by the 
writer, in no sense Christian terms ; that is, they were 
not occasioned or demanded by Christianity, but had 
their sole necessity and use in the refutation of now 
obsolete opinions, through which Christianity had to 
cut its way in the apostolic age. 

But let us look for one moment at the actual fulness 
of this meagreness, the real wealth of this poverty. 
I, as an individual man, conscious of a nature contain- 
ing more than flesh and blood, and of wants that 
remain when the bodily wants are satisfied, go to 
Christ and his Gospel, and what do I find there ? 
Ostensibly all that I personally need. Whether it be 
really so, will be our inquiry in the next two Lectures, 
which will be devoted to the test of experiment as ap- 
plied to Christianity. But on the face it offers me what, 
if genuine, ought fully to satisfy me. As for belief, it 
presents to my faith a paternal Providence, a full and 
righteous retribution, an equally full and complete 
redemption from the penalty of repented sin, an eter- 
nal life, a passage through death to endless happiness 
on conditions which I cannot misinterpret. As to 
my conduct, it tells me just what I ought to be and 
do toward God and man, how I am to discipline my 
thoughts, how to pray, how to demean myself in the 
various relations of life ; and there is not a single 

7 



146 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

occasion or exigency on which it does not furnish the 
principle from which I may, without danger of error, 
construct the appropriate rule, and determine the 
course of action which it demands. As for motives, 
they are supplied by the love and fatherhood of God, 
by the dying, ever-living love of Christ, and by the 
powers of the world to come, — motives which, if au- 
thentic, are of unsurpassable and inexhaustible force. 
I cannot say that I need any thing more. With this 
spiritual apparatus, if genuine, I can live in peace and 
die in hope. 

But there are a thousand inquiries growing out of 
my nature and position in this world, and not a few 
suggested or intensified by my faith in what Christ 
has revealed, on which he does not begin to satisfy 
my curiosity. I would fain get some rounded and 
complete view of the divine nature, while clouds and 
darkness rest on many of its aspects. I would gladly 
account for evil, physical and moral. I should like to 
know more clearly the precise relation of Christ to 
the Eternal Father. I should rejoice to look behind 
the veil of death, and to form some conception of the 
mode of being in the future life. But in none of 
these particulars does Jesus or his Gospel give us the 
light we crave. Let us draw, if we can, speech from 
this silence. 

Such silence would not have characterized a pseudo- 
revelation, the result whether of imposture or of delu- 
sion ; yet it is precisely what we should expect to 
find in a divine revelation. The first of these propo- 
sitions is almost self-evident. An impostor would, of 



CHRIST ALLAYS CURIOSITY. 1 47 

course, have adapted-himself to the prevaihng appe- 
tency for a knowledge of things beyond and above the 
sphere of human hfe. In no other way could disciples 
have been so easily enlisted or so strongly attached. 
Add to this advantage the consideration that fraud 
cannot be detected in a region outside of human ex- 
perience. No one comes back from the unseen world 
to confront the celestial topography of the Koran 
with his own observation. Equally would the imag- 
ined revelations from the brain of a fanatic have been 
ultra-mundane ; for religious delusion always has the 
realm beyond mortal vision for its field, and, so far as 
it affects one's views of things seen, it does so wholly 
by the lurid light cast upon them from things imag- 
ined, but invisible. In fine, delusion would have 
expatiated, and fraud have sought its best hunting- 
ground, in the very regions of thought where Chris- 
tianity gives us only faint and vague glimpses, often 
such as rather stimulate than appease our desire to 
know. Let us now see why Christianity, if divine, 
should have remained silent on these themes. 

We should have expected a divine revelation to 
remain silent where fanaticism and imposture will not 
hold their peace, because restless curiosity is thus 
reduced to a minimum. All knowledge raises more 
questions than it answers. The broader the visible 
horizon, the broader is the invisible circle that bounds 
it. Every truth attained abuts upon other truths still 
unattained. Had the teachings of Christ answered 
the questions which we most desire to have answered, 
the answers would have prompted still more numerous 



148 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

and difficult questions. Truth is infinite, and, were 
its entire realm made ours, "even the world itself 
could not contain the books that should be written ; " 
while nowhere short of this complete conquest would 
the" mind of man pause and say, " It is enough." 
Had every inquiry that we could novv^ raise been fully 
satisfied, the region of the unknown would only seem 
more vast than it now does, and from longing souls 
would go forth only the intenser demand for more 
light. 

It may also be maintained that the imperfection of 
our knowledge where we want to know more is essen- 
tial to our best spiritual nurture. Faith has a tran- 
scendent value, not so much for its contents as for 
the filial spirit of which it is equally nurse and nurs- 
ling ; and we can imagine a fulness of vision, an 
accuracy of proved and tested knowledge as to the 
great truths and facts of the spiritual life, which 
should come to us as the knowledge of terrestrial facts 
and of daily events reaches us, but by means of which 
the soul would forfeit that most wholesome discipline 
which consists in trusting where it cannot see, in 
taking on authority what it cannot know, in holding 
fast the clew for its guidance through cloud and mist 
and dense darkness. Certainly this trait has been 
most conspicuous in the greatest souls that we have 
known, and it has seemed one of the chief elements 
of their greatness. It has strengthened the fibre of 
character, and at the same time has given to the in- 
ward life a repose and equipoise which cannot come 
from mere knowledge, but are born of that faith which 



MYSTERY FEEDS DEVOUT THOUGHT. 1 49 

rests on a wisdorru-beyond its own. Who shall say 
that the faith thus nurtured may not be as essential 
in the future life as now, — that even there our igno- 
rance may not grow faster than our knowledge, — that 
at every stage of our eternal progress faith may not 
precede clear vision, in the face of mysteries still un- 
revealed, of heights and depths of the Infinite Provi- 
dence not yet scaled or sounded ? 

Hope, too, needs a certain degree of vagueness, no 
less than of assurance, to give it full working force. 
Were its objects too distinctly defined, they might 
make us impatient of the toil and pain through which 
they are to be won ; while their very dimness urges 
the aspiring soul ever on toward those serener heights 
where they may be more fully apprehended. The Mo- 
hammedan paradise is described in minute detail, and 
the result is indifference to life, — a fatalism which 
has indeed made the Moslem armies desperately brave, 
but has at the same time checked industrial activity, 
arrested progress, given despotism its holding ground, 
and paralyzed all the energies which underlie a healthy 
social and political condition. 

There are some directions in which, no doubt, the 
silence of Jesus tends to cherish devout thought and 
reverent imagination. It may be of untold benefit 
to think where we cannot know, to exercise our dis- 
cursive powers where our highest conceptions are 
entirely inadequate. Fruitless contemplation on the 
mysteries of the Divine Being may yet feed adoration, 
and deepen the fountain of loving piety. Though 
mysticism has brought no new truths to light, it has 



150 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

nourished the purest, loftiest devotion ; its subtilties 
have been cleansing and elevating ; its vague termi- 
nology has been the chariot of fire on which many an 
earth-dwelling spirit has been wafted to heaven. The 
discussions as to the modal union of the Father and 
the Son, though they have established nought to en- 
large the bounds of that knowledge which, Jesus says, 
resides in the bosom of the Father alone, and though 
they have often been only a fierce and bitter logomachy, 
sometimes giving aim and sweep to more material 
warfare, have yet oftener cherished a loving intimacy 
with Christ, and have been by none more earnestly 
pursued than by souls at peace with God and man, 
and more intent on following Christ than even on 
knowing him. Above all, we have reason to own the 
unspeakable blessedness of Christ's silence as to the 
future life. Other founders of religions, as I have 
said, have not been thus silent. They have con- 
structed paradise of what they deemed the choicest 
earthly materials ; and their heavenly societies have 
been such as would compel every pure and devout 
man to say, "■ O my soul, come not thou into their 
secret ; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou 
united." But here Jesus tells us nothing ; nor yet do 
we have any intimations from his apostles, except that 
in the glorious epic of the Apocalypse — a poem, 
though not in numbers — heaven is indicated by 
heaping together — designedly, as seems to me, with- 
out coherence or mutual compatibility — the most 
magnificent figures which human language can fur- 
nish, not to describe it, but to pronounce it unde- 



HEAVEN GROWS WITH OUR GROWTH 151 

scribable, — to reiterate in the rapt utterance of the 
seer what St. Paul says in simple prose, " Eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into 
the heart of man the things which God hath pre- 
pared for them that love him." In this absence of 
definite knowledge, imagination has free range and 
unrestricted scope. She has the plumb-line and the 
measuring-rod in her own hands, can lay out her own 
plot in the garden of the Lord, erect her own mansion 
within the golden gates, — transferring thither all that 
she has worthily loved, pursued, desired on earth, yet 
all the while assured that her highest conceptions are 
but faint types and dim foreshadowings of the far 
more exceeding glory, when for fancy there shall be 
open vision. Thus, undoubtedly, heaven is kept more 
constantly, glowingly, lovingly before the thought 
than by any detailed description, were such descrip- 
tion possible. What is of still more worth in this 
silence of revelation, the heaven of our thought grows 
as we grow, becomes loftier as we rise, richer as we 
increase in soul-wealth, always in advance of our 
clear conception, hovering on its outermost verge, 
yet in so near contact with what is best, purest, 
noblest in our consciousness and experience, as to 
give vividness to our hope and a felt reality to its 
objects. Moreover, the ideal of heaven, which we 
thus project from our own souls and fill with the best 
that is in us, in its turn reacts on the soul that gives 
it shape, attracts us more and more to its own higher 
sphere, and, as it grows richer and more beautiful, 
endows with its wealth and clothes with its beauty 
the whole life and character. 



152 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE, 

Yet another reason presents itself for the silence of 
Jesus, where religious teachers in general have been 
by no means sparing in their utterances. On many- 
subjects on which we would gladly know more, Jesus 
may have told us little or nothing, because of the 
poverty of human language and its inadequacy to 
the interpretation of the mysteries whose solution we 
crave. The teaching power of words is limited by our 
own consciousness and experience. On subjects that 
transcend this limit, language assumes one of two 
types. It either runs into anthropomorphism, and 
belittles and degrades divine things to human meas- 
ure and level ; or else, in soaring into the empyrean, 
it is arrested midway in impenetrable clouds and mists 
that never part. Of the latter tendency we find no 
trace in the simple, transparent words of Jesus ; and 
I am equally impressed by the reverent care which he 
evidently takes to shun the former, of which the exam- 
ples in the Old Testament are very numerous, — in 
part, no doubt, on account of the meagreness of the 
Hebrew vocabulary. Christ's method of teaching 
by parables, with all its other excellencies, is specially 
adapted to man's condition with reference to the sub- 
jects of religious curiosity. He thus suggests con- 
ceptions of the divine nature and providence which 
transcend the scope of literal language, and therefore 
of clear and definite thought, yet which may none the 
less move the affections, inspire the will, and shape 
the conduct. For instance, the parable of the Prodi- 
gal Son gives us views of the divine character, tender, 
familiar, loving, which we could not put into literal 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 153 

language withouLJrreverence, like that which we 
sometimes detect in the hymns sung by persons who 
have more piety than taste, but which we can feel 
with the profoundest gratitude, and recognize in those 
upliftiags of the soul in fervent praise when we " mean 
the thanks we cannot speak." 

Let us look for a moment at some of these subjects 
on which Jesus says so little. Let us see if they are not 
obviously and intrinsically beyond the range of any 
teaching of which we are susceptible, so that any defi- 
nite utterance with regard to them must be of neces- 
sity unauthentic and spurious. I will specify but two 
or three of these subjects, though I might present 
several other themes of curious inquiry and specula- 
tion as belonging to the same category. 

The origin and ministry of evil must manifestly 
be classed under this head. There are analogies that 
enable us to see how our inevitable ignorance as to this 
whole subject exists, but not to remove it. Were you 
to explain to a very young child, in the best words at 
your command, the entire scope and bearing of those 
provisions and customs of civilized society by which 
individuals are constrained to do, forego, resign, and 
endure unnumbered things, against their own will and 
private interest, for the general good, and sometimes 
even to the loss and detriment of the present and of 
more than one generation for the benefit of remote 
posterity, you would find your exposition clogged by 
words and phrases which had never come into the child's 
vocabulary, and could have no meaning for his ear : 
the view in space and time would be broader and deeper 

7* 



154 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

than his four or five years' hfe would enable him to 
take ; and the only result would be that, if he were 
docile and trustful, he would receive an impression 
that the hard things of which he often heard com- 
plaint would somehow and at some time issue in good. 
Still less can we, with our narrow range of vision and 
our brief earthly life, take in or be enabled to take in 
the entire problem of evil, which comprehends the 
universe and twin eternities, or to trace the vestiges, 
which undoubtedly exist thick-sown around us, of 
that all-wise and all-merciful optimism, which subsi- 
dizes suffering, wrong, and sin to its own culmination 
and triumph. Jesus could have revealed all this only 
to a mind broad and profound as his own, and to 
such a mind probably not in the tongue of Greek 
or Jew. 

Another subject on which for a like reason, no 
doubt, Jesus kept silence, is the nature of God. He 
defines his relativity to man, opens the door of access 
to his mercy, and manifests to us as much of him 
as can be incarnated in perfect humanity ; but that 
is all. And must it not of necessity have been all 1 
Have the metaphysical subtilties of the Christian 
fathers, the schoolmen, or modern theologians, upon 
the essence of God, ever expressed or conveyed an 
intelligible idea 1 Undoubtedly God is immeasurably 
more than man has seen or imagined ; but our con- 
ceptions of him are limited by the capacity, the recep- 
tivity of our own natures. He may have attributes as 
little within the range of our possible conceptions as 
fancy or metaphysics is within the comprehension of 



INADEQUACY OF LANGUAGE. 155 

a zoophyte. Or, o:3^the other hand, this partition of 
his being in our thought into separate attributes may 
have a meaning to us, only because our own inward 
being at best so lacks coherency and unity. Who 
knows that in the speech of heaven there are sepa- 
rate names for divine perfections } It may be that 
what seem to us distinguishable attributes are mutu- 
ally equivalent and convertible, as are the imponder- 
able forces of the material universe. But we are 
already beginning to " darken counsel by words 
without knowledge ; " nor can we ever glance a 
searching thought into that infinite depth of being, 
without admiring the wisdom of Him who taught us 
to say merely Our Father, and has inbreathed into 
our hearts the child-spirit which gives that title its 
restful and beatific meaning. 

In this connection we cannot but recur to the 
silence of Jesus about the future life. For the 
reasons already given, I doubt whether he would 
have told us more, if he could. But could he } 
What life is ; how the body and soul interact ; what 
portion of their joint existence and functions belongs 
to each ; how far finite being is dependent on material 
conditions, — these are questions which we not only 
cannot begin to answer, but the very terms of which 
have no definite meaning for us. How, then, could any 
language of ours be made the vehicle for instruction 
as to the philosophy of the life to come, its mode of 
being, the nature of the passage to it, the relation of 
our present bodily existence to the resurrection-life ? 
Had Jesus entered upon these questions, so far from 



156 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

throwing upon them for us the hght of his own clear 
understanding, he would only have involved the whole 
realm of the future in deeper obscurity. We may, 
then, regard the bald simplicity of his words of eter- 
nal life, the entire absence of descriptive detail, and 
the confirmation of those words, not by reasoning, 
but by the cardinal and fully attested fact of his own 
resurrection, as among the strong tokens of his mis- 
sion as a teacher sent from God. 

We have seen, I trust, that, so far as Jesus has 
failed to satisfy the curiosity of men as to matters 
beyond their scope and sphere, he has given us only 
added reason for accepting the testimony in behalf 
of the records of his life as authentic, and thus for 
regarding his religion as divine.* 

But omissions on the plane of human duty also 
have been alleged. It has, I think, never been denied 
by unbelievers or misbelievers that the morality of 
the New Testament tends to make men true, pure, 
kind, generous, modest, humble ; but it has been said 
that it fails to fit men for the daily life of the world, 
that it cherishes gloom, asceticism, and indifference 
to the worthy objects of endeavor and emulation, and 
that it ignores such virtues as courage, patriotism, and 
loyalty to friends. While, as to the defects which we 
have already considered, we confess the impeachment, 
and glory in it, in the particulars just now enume- 
rated we deny the charge of omission or deficiency in 
the teachings of Jesus. 

As regards the alleged tendency of Christianity to 

* See Appendix, note J. 



CHRISTIAN SELF-DENIAL. 157 

asceticism, we repudiate it, and challenge proof. There 
is not a trace of this tendency in the Gospels, except in 
John the Baptist, who was not a disciple of Christ, and 
whom Christ pronounced, in point of spiritual illumi- 
nation, less than the least of his disciples. Jesus 
instituted no fast, nor is there the slightest proof that 
he ever observed any. He was reproached for neg- 
lecting the fasts which formed a part, not indeed of the 
Mosaic religion, — for that has no fast, — but of the 
Rabbinical refinements upon it. On the other hand, 
there is not on record a single instance of his declin- 
ing any of the few festive occasions on which he was 
an invited guest ; and asceticism in the bosom of the 
Christian Church has found no stumbling-block so 
difficult to evade or surmount as the story of the mar- 
riage at Cana. 

Jesus indeed enjoins certain forms of self-denial ; 
but self-denial is not so much a duty as a universal 
human necessity. There is not a child of five years 
of age who has not learned this ; who does not know 
that he cannot have all that he wants, but can supply 
his foremost wants only by denying himself those 
which he holds as of secondary importance. Now 
the problem that Christ solves — and he alone solves 
it — is how so to deny one's self inferior benefits as to 
secure the largest measure of superior gifts, by yielding 
up bodily for spiritual goods, selfish pleasures for the 
higher and more enduring pleasures of beneficence, 
temporal happiness for eternal happiness. Where 
there is no conflict between body and soul, self-indul- 
gence and charity, the life that now is and that which 



158 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

is to come, Jesus enjoins no gratuitous self-denial, no 
sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. Whatever of bodily, 
self-centred, and earthly good can be ours without 
detriment to the soul or to our fellow-beings, he would 
have us utilize and enjoy to the full ; and he best 
fulfils the law and most truly breathes the spirit of 
Christ, who drinks freely and with full draughts at every 
pure fountain of joy that springs by his life-path, — 
who, with every power and faculty of body, mind, and 
soul, takes in the most that he can of this rich and 
beautiful world, in which there are many things obvi- 
ously made for no other purpose than that we should 
enjoy them and thank God for them. 

There was, indeed, a great deal of asceticism in the 
early Church. But it was imported from the dualism 
of the Oriental philosophy, according to which, as the 
outward world and the human body were created by 
the Evil Principle, his reign was to be abjured and 
defied by the mortification of the flesh and abstinence 
from the good things of this world. 

As regards indifference to the worthy objects of 
endeavor and emulation, there is not a precept of 
Jesus that has any bearing in this direction. He 
encourages and seconds the modest industry and 
humble enterprise of the apostles. He does not, as 
our translators have it, pronounce an indiscriminate 
ban upon the rich ; but, with reference to the stress 
of the times and the impending persecution of the 
infant Church, he speaks of it as hard for one to enter 
the kingdom of heaven, or his visible Church, rich, 
because enforced poverty was then the price at which 



CHRISTIAN COURAGE. 159 

alone one could become a disciple. There was, in- 
deed, something like community of goods for a little 
while among the disciples at Jerusalem ; but there is 
not the slightest intimation that this was by the com- 
mand of Christ, or as a matter of absolute duty. It 
was merely a temporary arrangement, which, as may 
be amply proved from St. Paul's epistles, was never 
extended beyond Jerusalem ; and it probably had but 
a very brief existence there. 

As to courage, there is not, indeed, a word of Jesus 
that can sanction the aggressive courage which is 
ready to incur hazard for whatever cause, — that which 
arms the man-slayer, the duellist, the prompt and 
stern avenger of his own or another's wrongs ; that 
which glories in war, delights in carnage, and loves 
the garment rolled in blood. This courage has been 
the greatest of curses to humanity, and, if the world 
shall ever be thoroughly Christianized, it will be looked 
back upon with very much the same horror with 
which we now regard cannibalism. Not that I believe 
the time will ever come when the brave men who have 
laid down their lives in defence of their country, of 
freedom, or of human rights, will be held in diminished 
honor ; but it will be seen that the vast majority of 
wars have not had a particle of right on either side, 
and that those in which men have been on one side 
urged by sacred duty have none the less had their 
origin in atrocious wrong. But the courage which 
dares death rather than disloyalty to one's convictions 
of truth and right has in Christ both its most em- 
phatic command and its most illustrious example. 



l6o CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

What can be stronger than " Be not afraid of them that 
kill the body, and after that have no more that they 
can do " ? Or what spectacle of courage has the world 
seen that can bear a momentary comparison with 
that of Him who, " travelling in the greatness of his 
strength," had the cross perpetually in view, went up 
to Jerusalem to die, and by his own words and deeds, 
at every stage of his ministry, stimulated the powers 
of darkness and hastened the fatal hour ? 

As regards patriotism, there is in the Gospel no 
justification of that Wind and reckless love of country 
professed in a much-lauded sentiment of one of our 
naval heroes : *' Our country, may she always be right ; 
but, right or wrong, may she always be victorious ! " 
Yet we find in Jesus a love of country intense and 
tender. One of the only two occasions on which he 
is said to have been moved to tears was in view of 
the impending devastation of his native land, and the 
levelling of her glory with the dust. Oh, had we abound- 
ing among us patriotism like this, — to weep over our 
national sins, to deprecate the righteous judgment of 
outraged Heaven upon our time-serving and corrup- 
tion, our intemperance and our greed of gain, our 
profligacy and infidelity, — there woul,d be hope that 
in this our day we might give heed to the things 
belonging to our peace, before they be hidden from 
our eyes. 

As to friendship, even if we can appeal to no pre- 
cepts of Jesus with reference to the mutual duties of 
those bound by the closest intimacy, we can at least 
cite his example. What more sacred tie can there be 



CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP. l6l 

than that indicated_by his words to the apostles, " I 
have called you friends ; for all things that I have 
heard of my Father I have made known unto you " ? 
In that little circle, too, let us not forget that there 
was still an inmost company of three; and, of these 
three, one who will hold to the end of time the spirit- 
ual primacy of the sacred college as pre-eminently 
" the disciple whom Jesus loved." Christ's friendship, 
in each degree of intimacy, was manifested by tokens 
of fellowship and affection which would have been 
inappropriate to a union less close and confidential. 
But the expression of friendship never scanted 
thoughts or labors of love for the outside world. On 
the other hand, we may learn from him that love gen- 
erates love, not only in him who receives, but in him 
who bestows it. There is no such laboratory of diffu- 
sive benevolence and efficient philanthropy as a home 
whose atmosphere is love ; and precisely the same 
office is performed by intimate friendships ; for love 
grows by spending, — the more is given, the more 
remains. But while all this is implied in the teach- 
ings and manifested in the life of Jesus, there was no 
need, and there never is need, of special precepts for 
the cultivation of friendship. It cannot grow to order, 
or be formed by rule. It springs up of necessity 
where there are warm hearts, with common proclivi- 
ties, tastes, and interests, and especially where there 
are hearts united by the love of God and in the work 
which he has given them to do. There was in Christ's 
time no lack of friendship, whether between good men 
or bad men ; nor can there ever be. If Christ had 



1 62 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

given any rules for friendship, they would probably 
have been limitations, in the spirit in which Cicero 
writes, " If all things which friends desire are to be 
done, such alliances should be deemed conspiracies, 
not friendships." * But these limitations are included 
in the paramount law of love and service, first of all to 
God, and to the dearest among kindred and friends, 
only in, and to, and through him. 

I have thus enumerated, I believe, all the deficien- 
cies with which the morality of Christ and his Gospel 
has been charged, and have shown you that in these 
its actual deficiency consists in shunning excesses and 
abuses. f 

I must here close the first division of my proposed 
plan. My endeavor has been to demonstrate that, as 
regards the evidence of testimony, Christianity occu- 
pies at least as high a position as the truths of science. 
I have shown you that our four Gospels can be traced 
by quotations, references, descriptions, and coincidences 
as far back as the first century of our era ; that they 
have borne from the beginning the names of their now 
reputed authors, without the vestige of a doubt as to 
their authorship ; that those writers had the means of 
knowing the truth as to the materials of their record ; 
and that they had no conceivable motive for false testi- 
mony in those matters, but every conceivable earthly 
motive for suppressing what they report as facts. I 
have shown you that, as St. Paul evidently believed all 

* " Si omnia facienda sunt, quae amici velint, non amicitiae tales, 
sed conjurationes putandas sunt." 
t See Appendix, note K. 



CUMULATIVE ARGUMENT FROM TESTIMONY. 163 

that the evangehsts -f^ecorded about Jesus, we get rid 
of no difficulties by resorting — even would documen- 
tary evidence permit this — to the hypothesis of the 
gradual and slow growth of the Messianic idea, and 
its full development in a later than the apostolic age. 
I have adduced Jesus as his own witness, maintaining 
that his actual existence alone can account for the 
Gospels. I have given an adequate explanation of 
the peculiar phenomena of the first three Gospels, 
and have exhibited the special grounds that we have 
for maintaining the genuineness of the fourth Gospel. 
I have attempted to prove that the miraculous element 
in the history of Christ is in entire harmony with the 
rest of the narrative, and therefore not to be rejected 
or doubtedj'if that narrative as a whole be fully authen- 
ticated. I have shown that the actual resurrection of 
Jesus Christ is the only method of accounting for the 
record of that event as it stands, for the undoubted 
belief in it on the part of the primitive disciples, and 
for the influence of that belief in the early history of 
the Christian Church. Finally, in the present Lecture 
I have sought confirmation for this testimony in be- 
half of the Gospels, from the alleged omissions and 
defects in the teachings of Jesus. 

Now what I would maintain is that the facts re- 
corded in the Gospels are established on at least as 
trustworthy testimony as are the facts remote in time 
and space to whose testimony scientific men are con- 
stantly giving credence, and on which the science of 
the present day is based. This last-named testimony 
I am by no means disposed to deny, doubt, or under- 



164 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

value. I rejoice that it is so rich, so clear, so various 
in its sources, yet so harmonious in its utterances. I 
bless God that he has thus made numberless men 
who had no conception of scientific truth tributary to 
its establishment and verification, — that the stones 
of the temple of knowledge have been quarried, 
squared, and polished by so many simple, honest 
men, who knew not what a great work they were 
doing. But there is no principle on which their 
testimony can be pronounced valid, and that of the 
early Christian witnesses untrustworthy. We must 
accept both, or else reject both, and include science 
and Christianity in indiscriminate scepticism or denial. 
God has joined the two in the witness for their au- 
thenticity ; what he hath joined man may not put 
asunder. 



LECTURE VIII. 

II. EXPERIMENT. — EXPERIMENT AS A TEST OF SCIENTIFIC 
TRUTH. — CLAIMED AS A TEST BY THE AUTHOR OF 
CHRISTIANITY. — CHRISTIANITY AS A FACTOR IN THE 
FORMATION OF CHARACTER. — AS A SOURCE OF ENERGY. 
— AS A SUPPORT IN TRIAL. — AS SUSTAINING HOPE IN 
DEATH. — CUMULATIVE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIMENT. 

T SAID in my first Lecture that science and Chris- 
■*■ tianity alike depend for their evidence on testi- 
mony, experiment, and intuition. I have compared 
them as regards testimony. We will pass now to 
experiment. This bears a most important part in 
the ascertainment and verification of scientific truth. 
In some of the sciences, as in chemistry, for instance, 
it is at once guide, discoverer, and test. The ultimate 
reason why such and such results take place no mortal 
can know ; yet no one hesitates to infer from these re- 
sults universal laws of nature, and in many instances 
a single experiment has been sufficient to establish a 
principle of large scope and profound significance. It 
is by experiment alone that the sciences of heat, light, 
electricity, and magnetism have been created, and 
what are called their principles or laws are but the 
outcome of individual experiments generalized. A 
large part of the science of human and animal physi- 
ology has been built solely on experiment. 



1 66 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Christianity claims to be tested by experiment. 
Its Founder repeatedly proposed this test to his dis- 
ciples, and gave them clearly to understand that the 
growth and honor of his religion would be contingent 
on the manifestation of its efficacy in their lives 
and characters. Experiment of Christianity has been 
made for more than eighteen centuries. Its claims 
have been put to the test. Men have resorted to it 
for the fulfilment of its promises. The correspond- 
ence of its working with its professions has been 
tried at every point. Has it succeeded } Or has it 
failed } This is a fundamental question, even if the 
evidence of testimony be unimpeached. Testimony 
might, indeed, establish the authenticity of the Gos- 
pels, and thus prove that Christianity was of divine 
origin. But so, we believe, was Judaism. So, the 
Mohammedans say, were both Judaism and Christi- 
anity, no less than the doctrine of their own prophet. 
What we Christians would fain prove, if we can, is not 
merely that Christianity is a divinely given religion, 
but that it holds the foremost place among all relig- 
ions ; and that place it can make good only by what 
it does. Its paramount worth can be tested by ex- 
periment alone. The experimental test of Christianity 
may be considered, first, as regards the influence of 
this religion on individual character ; and, secondly, 
in its action on society, civilization, government, and 
the collective character and history of nations. The 
former of these divisions will suffice for the present, 
the latter will be the subject of the next Lecture. 

Christianity purports to be a guide to virtue, a 



CLAIMS OF JESUS. 167 

fountain of inward sixength, an unfailing support and 
solace in trial and grief, a beatific influence under the 
shadow of death ; and in these particulars it claims 
pre-eminence over all other forms of belief and cul- 
ture. Its Founder urges in his own behalf these 
paramount claims in such terms as their truth alone 
can justify. "I am the light of the world: he that 
foUoweth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall 
have the light of life." " I will give you a mouth and 
wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able 
to gainsay nor resist." " Peace I leave with you, my 
peace I give unto you : not as the world giveth, give 
I unto you." *' Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." " I give 
unto them [my sheep, or followers] eternal life ; and 
they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them 
out of my hand," " He that heareth my word . . . 
hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condem- 
nation ; but is passed from death unto life." 

It is of no small evidential value that these words 
have for so many centuries been familiarly read by 
wise and discreet men ; that they are read to-day by 
thousands upon thousands of sensible men and women 
all over the civilized world, without surprise or repug- 
nancy, without their being regarded as misplaced or 
extravagant, — as indicating audacity or insane self- 
exaltation. I doubt whether there has lived any other 
man, in whose saying these things persons of superior 
intelligence and culture would acquiesce. I do not 
find that the founders of other religions — not even 
Mohammed — have ever professed in their own per- 



l68 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

sons to stand in such direct beneficent relations to 
their disciples. Certainly we read nothing like this in 
Moses or the prophets, nor yet in the words of com- 
fort and strength addressed by the Christian apostles 
to their converts. Had Socrates talked in this way 
about himself, the hemlock would have been brewed 
for him when he first began to teach, and his best 
friends would have forced the cup upon him, unless 
they had given him hellebore instead, as to a madman. 
Even the sages of our own time, whose oracular utter- 
ances profess to comprehend and exceed the wisdom 
of all antecedent centuries, have never yet said such 
great things about themselves as Christ said ; and 
were they to say them, it would completely disen- 
chant their disciples. We are not surprised that 
Jesus Christ should have spoken thus, simply be- 
cause many know, or think they know, that he 
uttered no more than they have themselves experi- 
enced in their relation to him, and many more think 
that they have witnessed in their friends and neigh- 
bors phenomena corresponding with such experience. 
Let us look at these claims in detail. 

There can be no doubt that Christ claims the ability 
to form the very highest style of moral character, the 
most symmetrical grouping of virtues and graces, the 
most consummate spiritual beauty of which the soul 
of man is capable. This claim certainly seems to 
justify itself on a superficial view of the moral history 
of our race. If we compare good men before Christ 
with good men in and through Christ, there can be no 
possible doubt that the latter are by far the better. Of 



i 



CHRISTIAN STYLE OF CHARACTER. 1 69 

patriarchs and prophets under the Mosaic dispensation, 
those whose Hves are described with any degree of 
fulness have, indeed, single traits of devotion, fidelity, 
or patriotism, which make their memory illustrious ; 
yet they manifest decidedly sub-Christian characters, 
and even of Abraham, Jacob, Samuel, David, Nehe- 
miah, it might be said, ** The least really in and 
thoroughly of the kingdom of heaven (or Christ) is 
greater than he." Still more can we say the same of 
nearly all the best men of classic antiquity ; for in 
them we generally see splendid merits allied with 
equally conspicuous faults. Thus, above all the 
ancients outside of Judaea who preceded Christ, 
Cicero makes himself the object of sincere, almost 
affectionate admiration to his diligent reader ; yet 
his portrait is sadly defaced by a vanity of which a 
single sitting at the feet of Jesus would have cured 
him, and by a lack of sincerity and consistency which 
showed how sadly he needed the tonic power of the 
Gospel It is worthy of notice that the two illustrious 
men of classic fame who seem most Christianlike, Plu- 
tarch and Epictetus, both flourished after the Gospel 
had been extensively diffused. I do not imagine that 
they knew any tiling definite about Christianity : if 
they had, they would have been Christians. But the 
spirit was in the air ; the tone of Christian sentiment 
had penetrated farther than any fact or dogma of the 
new religion ; and there were receptive souls that 
caught it, without knowing whence or how. To re- 
turn from this digression, if digression it be : John 
and Paul not only represent higher types of character 

8 



170 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

than we find in the entire Jewish and Gentile world 
before Christ, — types, too, which had no antetype 
except the Master whom they called divine ; but they 
stand before us still as unsurpassed, if equalled. The 
only account that they could give of themselves was 
that through contemplation of the image of God in 
Christ they had grown into the same image ; and, if 
they were and still are pre-eminent, we have no way 
of accounting for it but that they were proof -impres- 
sions of that image before it had become dimmed by 
time, or had suffered the partial obscuration inevi- 
table on its being transferred from a living form to an 
uttered story,* and then from an uttered story to a 
written book. 

The post-Christian history of human virtue presents 
precisely the same contrast between Christian and 
extra-Christian excellence, which we have already 
traced. Let any impartial person draw up a list of 
the eminently good men and women who have left 
their enduring record within the last eighteen cen- 
turies, or are writing it now, and then divide the 
names on the list into Christian and non-Christian, 
— the muster-roll of the latter would be exceedingly 
meagre, and would probably include none of the pre- 
eminent ; and I doubt whether, even in this lesser 
catalogue, we should find any whose characters had 
not been formed under Christian influences. Among 

* The peculiar circumstances of St. Paul's conversion, and the 
facts in his own psychological experience to which he makes repeated 
reference, placed him virtually in the position with reference to Jesus 
occupied by none else but his immediate disciples. 



b 



CHRISTIAN VIRTUE. 17I 

those who in our o\vft-^:ime and land are understood to 
be non-believers in historical Christianity, there are 
not a few whose characters cannot but win abounding 
reverence and love ; but of these I know not one who 
had not his nurture in a Christian family, and some of 
the more distinguished among them were in early life 
members of the Christian Church, and were then cer- 
tainly as pure, amiable, and philanthropic as they are 
now. I doubt whether you can point to a single per- 
son that has grown up under the discipline of a scep- 
tical philosophy, whom you would designate as a fit 
example for those whose characters are now in the 
process of formation. 

Christian virtue is a peculiar type, and peculiar for 
its comprehensiveness. The title over the cross was 
written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin ; and it is an 
index of the broad spiritual culture of those who have 
become what they were or are under the nurture of 
Him who was then termed in derision the King of the 
Jews. The Hebrew spirit was distinctively religious ; 
but, because divorced from refining influences and 
from large opportunities for secular activity, it had 
been narrowed and etiolated into a stupid and super- 
stitious ritualism. The Grecian mind was in the 
closest sympathy with material beauty, art, poetry, 
and song ; it bore the imprint of the most thorough 
aesthetic discipline ; but, destitute of religious ideas 
on which faith and reverence could repose, and at the 
same time feeble and capricious, it had degenerated 
into gross sensualism. The early Roman state was 
pervaded by the spirit of law, and thence of force ; 



172 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

but, for lack of religious discipline and elegant cul- 
ture, it had become rapacious, despotic, sanguin- 
ary. It is the glory of Christianity to have restored 
these effete elements of character, and blended them 
in its nurture. The developed Christian character 
has the intense religiousness of the Hebrew psalmists 
and seers ; however destitute of the wonted means of 
culture, it takes on, or rather in, a culture of its own, 
sweet, gentle, kind, spiritual ; and it submits itself to 
law, not, indeed, as to a hard yoke, but as to a loving 
service, while law gives it a forceful energy, which 
pervades the whole life-work, and makes it constant, 
loyal, noble. These elements are blended, unified in 
the Christian, because they were, each and all, perfect 
in the Master whom he owns and follows, who was 
*'King of the Jews," — the love and worship of God, 
his purple robe and diadem ; more than Grecian in the 
grace and amenity of his spirit and his walk among 
men; more than Roman in the entireness with which 
he made himself the incarnate law of God, and alone, 
among those born of woman, finished the whole work 
which God gave him to do. You can trace these 
elements in all the exemplars of Christian excellence, 
— not only in those who fill high places and wield an 
extended influence, but equally in the most lowly and 
unprivileged spheres. Wherever in humble and ob- 
scure life you find one of untaught grace in speech 
and mien, and rigidly faithful in the least requirements 
of duty, — when you look farther, you trace also the 
Hebrew religiousness, only of the Zion rather than the 
Sinai type, and you may " take knowledge " of such a 
one that he has been with Jesus. 



CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, 1 73 

In experimental philosophy there are various ways 
of testing the properties of a substance under trial. 
One question is, Does it show its identity and hold 
its own, when combined with various substances, in 
different proportions, and under altered conditions ? 
Thus the presence of iron is detected by infallible 
tokens alike in unnumbered compound mineral sub- 
stances, in the sap of various plants, in the human 
blood, in the rays of the spectrum, — in all unchanged 
in its essential characteristics. In like manner Chris- 
tian culture has been associated with every other 
conceivable element of culture, and in all these com- 
binations it preserves the same essential properties 
of piety, sweetness, and strength, — not, indeed, in the 
perfect equipoise which we behold in the one great 
Exemplar, but in a sufficient measure to indicate their 
source, and to discriminate them from traits elsewhere 
derived and otherwise nourished. 

The experimental philosopher, again, simplifies his 
experiments, — tests the substance in hand with a sin- 
gle other substance, carefully eliminating all foreign 
elements. We have had abundant opportunity to sub- 
ject Christianity to this test also. It has been applied 
to the human rasa tabula, the unpreoccupied mind, 
the moral nature that has had no previous culture, the 
little child, the ignorant adult, the untutored savage : 
it has been, in such cases, the only training, subdu- 
ing, intenerating, energizing force ; and in unnum- 
bered instances it has shown its adequacy to mould 
the spirit in sanctity, beauty, and power. 

Moreover, the Christian consciousness not only 



174 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

betrays, but acknowledges its source. While an in- 
finitesimal proportion who have at some time seemed 
the disciples of Jesus, retaining much that they de- 
rived from him, have disclaimed him and " walk no 
more with him," the overwhelming majority of those 
who have manifested the type of character of which I 
have spoken hesitate not to ascribe all that they have 
and are to Christ. They will tell you : " This virtue 
I have cherished, because I see it in my Master. 
That sinful propensity I have subdued, because his 
word and spirit rebuke it. I have been uplifted in 
prayer on the wings of his devotion. I have been 
furnished for duty by the instructions that fell from 
his lips. I have been armed against temptation by 
the panoply with which he girded me. The life which 
I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son 
of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." 

I arn fully aware of the objection which may be urged 
against this argument, on the ground of the very im- 
perfect moral development to be witnessed in the vast 
majority of those who profess to have learned of Jesus 
how to live. The argument is not, indeed, so strong as 
it might be, — not so strong as it will be in the better 
time to come. Were Christians in general all that they 
profess to be and ought to be, I doubt whether there 
would be need of offering any other evidence for 
Christianity than the lives of its disciples. But we 
are willing, as the case stands, to base our argument 
on the following statement. The best men that the 
world has seen have been Christians, and have pro- 
fessed to derive their virtues from Christ. Among 



CHRISTIANITY A SOURCE OF STRENGTH. 1 75 

men of a less excellent type of character, yet belong- 
ing, on the whole, to the class of virtuous men, we 
have reason to believe that the greater part have de- 
rived whatever of goodness they possess from Christ ; 
while we find that immorality and vice are never to 
be traced to the presence, but are, in unnumbered 
instances, obviously due to the absence or deficiency 
of Christian training and influence. Were Christ 
and his religion to be eliminated from among the fac- 
tors that constitute the moral character of modern 
Christendom, all the highest forms of excellence would 
be eliminated also ; the next highest would be nearly 
extinguished, and all lower grades sadly depleted. 
Nor have we within our experimental knowledge any 
moral force, agency, or influence, which could begin 
to do for human character what Christ and his relig- 
ion have done. As much as this has been proved, and 
is at the same time so patent and manifest as hardly to 
need proof ; and up to this point Christianity sustains 
the test of experiment, by having done what it prom- 
ises and purports to do for the formation of character. 
Christianity claims, in the next place, to be regarded 
as pre-eminently a source of strength, a motive power 
for whatever man is bound to do or needs to have 
done. There are, indeed, many Christians who are 
not distinguished as workers. Yet you will find that 
the two characters coincide much more frequently 
than they exist apart, and that it is under the un- 
doubted impulse of expressly Christian motives that 
the most and best work has been done and is doing 
throughout the civilized world. 



176 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

The working force of Jesus himself has been kept 
too much in the background, in the glowing admira- 
tion called forth by the peculiarly lovable traits of his 
character. But we have reason to place as tran- 
scendent an estimate on his energy as on his gentle- 
ness. His public ministry was but from a year and a 
half to three years in duration ; * and in that period 
what a wide diversity and frequent change of scene, 
— in Judaea, Galilee, Samaria, Peraea ! What succes- 
sions and varieties of stubborn soil to be broken up, 
and made penetrable by the seeds of evangelic teach- 
ing ! What constant and urgent appeals for his ser- 
vices to the suffering and afflicted ! Some of his 
days, of which we can trace the record, are so 
crowded with ever-changing claims upon his energy, 
that they might seem to have required the sun to 
linger on his course to make them adequate to their 
work. Then after those weary days he seeks new 
strength for the morrow, not in sleep, but more ef- 
fectively in prayer ; for as the touch of his mother 
earth renovates the vigor of the fabled demigod, so 
from communion with his own mother-land flows fresh 
might into the soul of the heaven-born. 

Closest among his standard-bearers, St. Paul exem- 
plifies the energizing efficacy of Christianity. How 
intense his activity ! How broadly comprehensive 
his plans of labor ! A pastorate embracing all the 
habitable regions of the earth would now be scarcely 
greater, considering the present facilities for locomo- 

* The chronological data in the Gospels certainly render the 
shorter period not improbable. See Appendix, note L. 



CHRISTIAN WORKERS. 177 

tion, than was for him the care of all the churches in 
the diocese erected by his toil. No navigator could 
tell more than he of the perils of the deep ; nor was it 
without the utmost hardship and hazard that he made 
his way, often where there was no thoroughfare for 
ordinary intercourse, in the rugged interior of Asia 
Minor, or on the inhospitable coast of Macedonia. 
Ubiquitous in his oversight and presence, where he 
has once been, he makes himself felt ever onward as 
an efficient force. And it is with his whole being 
that he labors, — with mind, and heart, and soul, — so 
that the imprint of his massive spirit and his burning 
zeal has still remained on the life of the Christian 
Church, and is renewed with pristine vividness when- 
ever there is a fresh impulse toward spiritual growth, 
or an access of earnest endeavor in behalf of the un- 
evangelized. Moreover, we have from him the clear 
exhibition of the convictions and motives under which 
he wrought his life-work, — a profound sense of the 
love and sacrifice of Christ, of the claims of his 
brother-men on him for the sake of the common 
Father, and of his own instrumentality as an agent 
for the accomplishment of God's purposes of love. 

It is in these exclusively Christian elements that 
the great workers of the last eighteen centuries have 
been of one mind and heart. No matter what their 
sphere of labor, — whether it is Ambrose, with his own 
unaided prowess keeping at bay the forces of the 
empire ; or Luther, with the '* words that shook the 
world ;" or Oberlin, gathering in the Lord's lost sheep 
among the mountains ; or Howard, sounding the low- 

8* 



178 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

est depths of misery in prisons and pest-houses all 
over Europe ; or Wesley, pouring fresh life-blood 
from Calvary into the desiccated veins of ecclesiastical 
formalism and indifferentism ; or Judson, sacrificing 
the aims of a towering ambition for toil amidst a 
thousand deaths, with no forecast glimmering of 
earthly fame ; or Arnold, inaugurating a new era for 
liberal Christian culture wherever his life-record shall 
be read ; or Florence Nightingale, restoring the order 
of nobility founded when Jesus washed the feet of 
his disciples, and carrying off, with her sisterhood of 
mercy, all the laurels of the last great wars, — wher- 
ever we see pre-eminent ability and success in a life- 
work worth performing, we find but the reproduction 
of the specifically Christian elements of St. Paul's 
energy, — a spirit profoundly moved in grateful sym- 
pathy with a loving, suffering Redeemer, a strong 
emotional recognition of human brotherhood, and a 
merging of self in the sense of a mission and a charge 
from God. The absence of either of these injures 
the work, mars its staple, or scants its quantity, 
and without the first of the three the others are want- 
ing or deficient ; for Christ by his sufferings, so far 
as they are laid hold on with loving faith, reconciles 
man to man no less than man to God, while it is only in 
view of his transcendent excellence and his paramount 
claims upon us that our own selfhood is humbled, our 
suit for wages cancelled, and we are endowed with the 
true spirit of service. Accordingly you will find that, 
when divorced from Christ, even philanthropy grows 
sour or bitter, or narrow and exclusive, runs in veins, 



INFIDELITY FRUITLESS. 1 79 

makes distiiictions_of_persons, or else becomes feeble 
and inane, the heart-work lapsing into mere handwork 
or tongue-work. 

We could ask for no more decisive experimental 
test of Christianity than this. We would apply it 
chiefly to such labors as inure to the benefit of 
humanity. Of reforms which have marked stages of 
actual and irreversible progress ; of institutions for 
the promotion of human health, comfort, happiness, 
intelligence, virtue ; of propagandisms that have had 
a single view to the improvement of mankind ; of new 
forms of charity such as spring up with the fresh 
needs of every age ; of lives devoted, in the whole or 
in great part, to specific labors of love, — how many 
can you find ipi the world's history anterior to Chris- 
tianity } How many can you find since, or now, that 
may not be placed, without controversy, to the credit 
of Christianity ; that is, of Christians who would dis- 
claim the praise for themselves, and demand it for the 
Master whom they serve and follow } 

I cannot see that infidelity, so far as it has pre- 
vailed, has even profited by the example of the magi- 
cians of Egypt in the time of Moses, who endeavored 
to copy the works which they could not rival. It has 
had its fair opportunity. When it had free scope in 
France, it left, I think, no vestiges of philanthropy, or 
even of humanity. Nor in Protestant countries are they 
who reject Christianity distinguishing themselves by 
any services that will have their witness on earth 
and their enduring record in heaven. You have in 
this city an infidel organization that has its own press, 



l8o CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

its festivals, its saints' days. There are names which 
its members love to keep ever green, however remote 
their fragrance may be from the odor of sanctity. 
They observe the birthday of Thomas Paine, as you 
do Christmas. Are they doing any great works in 
his name } Are they beginning to show, or do they 
promise to show even in the remote future when they 
shall have crushed out Christianity, that Antichrist 
can do more for man than Christ has ever done 1 

In fine, Christianity has so far manifested its 
superiority in beneficent action to all the other work- 
ing forces of the world combined, that the experi- 
mental evidence for it under this head is oppressive 
and unmanageable from its multiplicity and fulness. 
If you were to take away Christian work and workers 
from the world, and destroy the vestiges of what has 
been wrought in Christ's name, I doubt whether those 
who now reject or despise the Gospel would think the 
world any longer worth living in. 

Christianity claims, also, to afford such support, 
solace, and peace under trial and grief as can be de- 
rived from no other religion or philosophy. We can- 
not, indeed, ignore the fact that there has been no 
little brave endurance in which Christianity has borne 
no part. We cannot forget that Stoicism professed to 
account calamity, loss, and pain as not in any sense 
evils, and that among its disciples were illustrious 
men whose lofty serenity no misfortune could cloud, 
whose stern courage no suffering could daunt. I will 
yield to no one in my admiration of the Stoics. Were 
I parted from Christ, I certainly should fall back into 



JOY IN CHRIST. l8l 

their ranks ; for theJ»an-born philosophy of life and 
duty has not advanced a single step since the era sig- 
nalized by their most illustrious names. Yet there 
was in their resignation something grim, fierce, 
defiant. They yielded to Fate, not to Providence. 
They had not the alchemy by which to extract good 
from seeming evil, which, therefore, was only endured 
by them, not transfigured for and in them. For them, 
too, there was a limit of endurance, and from evils 
beyond earthly remedy or hope their philosophy 
opened for them a lawful escape through suicide. 
They were, indeed, calm, self-possessed, strong, but 
not happy, under severe affliction. There is, there- 
fore, in the Christian's joy in tribulation, in the peace 
clear to his consciousness, yet passing all understand- 
ing, during seasons of straitness, grief, and suffering, 
an element peculiarly his own. The happiest person 
I ever knew was a widow, who had survived all of a 
large family of children of beautiful promise, had sunk 
from an easy competence into utter penury, and had 
been through declining years of growing infirmity 
sustained solely by the loving ministry of friends, not 
one of them of her own kindred. Her last audible 
words were of gratitude to God for the thick-sown 
mercies of that widowed, desolate life ; and our fun- 
eral service for her was one of thanksgiving to God, 
not that he had taken her out of a world of trial, but 
that in it he had made her so radiantly happy. This 
is not a solitary case ; were it so, it would have no 
place here. Every Christian minister has been con- 
versant with like experiences, and we have traced 



1 82 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

them to their source. It is through the felt sympathy 
and fellowship of a suffering Saviour, by entering into 
the spirit of his cross, by making his prayer of resig- 
nation their own, and by taking into their hearts the 
power of his resurrection, that his disciples attain this 
perfect peace, this consummate gladness of soul. An 
aged mother once met me with a smile when I went 
to condole with her on the death of her only son, and 
her first words were, " I have been like the women at 
the sepulchre, who said, Who will roll the stone away 
for us ? but when they came to the spot, an angel had 
removed it for them." Was there not an angel, nay, 
the Lord of angels, at her side, to strengthen her 1 

Another contrast presents itself between Stoicism 
and Christianity. Stoicism was a philosophy in the 
highest import of the word, attainable only by pro- 
longed mental culture and self -discipline ; and it was 
one of its fundamental tenets that the virtues of ordi- 
nary life were only an imperfect semblance of virtue. 
On the other hand, Christianity proffers its support 
where there is no other culture than its own mere 
rudiments, where there is not sufficient grasp of mind 
to take in its more recondite dogmas, to interpret its 
more obscure texts, or to comprehend any thing what- 
ever *' save Jesus Christ and him crucified." We have 
witnessed, times without number, the experiment in 
the simplest form, — the contact of the dying, risen 
Saviour with the mind that had no other resource ; 
and we have seen that this alone was sufficient for 
the child, for the slave, for the unlettered and unprivi- 
leged, for those who, but for their faith in Christ, 



THE CHRISTIAN VICTORY OVER DEATH 1 83 

would have been aiTicing the refuse of society. Such 
souls it has transformed into kingly spirits that can 
encounter penury, bereavement, suffering, a life with 
no sunny side or hopeful aspect, and rise more than 
conquerors over all. If there be any other religion, 
philosophy, or culture that can show such trophies, 
we will then take our stand with those who term 
Christianity one of the great religions, and name 
Christ in the same category with the sages of Greece 
and Rome, Europe and America. 

Finally, Christianity claims as its prerogative the 
victory over death. This, however, it may seem to 
share ; for there have been many calm and brave 
deaths on which the light of Christian faith has not 
shone. Yet here there is not so much a resemblance 
as a contrast. The closing hours of Socrates present, 
perhaps, the most Christianlike instance of a con- 
scious approach to the margin of the separating 
stream. Far be it from me to say a word in deprecia- 
tion of the solemn grandeur of those last communings 
of the venerable sage with the friends that stood with 
him on the brink of eternity. Rather let us believe 
that there were about his soul foregleamings of the 
Light that was coming into the world, — yet but the 
dim day-dawn, not the risen or rising sun. Compare 
his doubtful utterances, as quoted in a former Lecture, 
his express disclaiming of certainty in a matter neces- 
sarily so obscure, with the words of the Christian 
apostle, " I am now ready to be offered ; the time of 
my departure is at hand ; . . . there is laid up for 
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the 



184 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

righteous Judge, shall give me;" "I know whom I 
have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to 
keep that which I have committed unto him." 

Then, too, the assurance of Socrates, such as it 
was, was the result of a life devoted to thought and 
reasoning, and to daily offices of philosophical teach- 
ing. The immeasurably fuller and more elastic assur- 
ance of Paul has belonged to multitudes, in every age, 
of the illiterate, of imperfectly developed minds, of 
persons who, but for their Christian faith, would have 
been confessedly among the feeblest members of so- 
ciety. We all know that in death Christ gives the 
victory to spirits else frail and timid, — that they pass 
out of the world in the undoubting confidence that 
they are going but from room to room in their 
Father's house, — that their only consciousness is 
that of an eternal life already begun, over which death 
has no power. In these cases we have again the 
experiment in its simplest form, — Christ and the 
soul of man, with no other possible ground of support, 
source of strength, or object of hope, — with no 
hoarded resources of philosophical reflection, with 
no capacity of reasoning on immortality, of throwing 
out a bridge of speculation and theory over the abyss 
that yawns before them. 

Let us now sum up our argument. Christianity 
has nurtured every type of goodness, — the tender, 
the heroic, the philanthropy that has ministered to 
all forms of social wrong and evil, the compassion that 
has relieved all descriptions of want and misery, the 
intrepid courage which has counted life of no worth 



RESULTS OF EXPERIMENT. 1 85 

in comparison with Royalty to the true and the right. 
It has given peace and gladness to unnumbered souls 
in every form of distress, suffering, bereavement, and 
desolation. It has inspired an elastic and immortal 
hope in those who have watched by the death-bed of 
their best beloved. Its notes of triumph have been 
rehearsed and echoed by believing souls over the 
open grave. It has filled the hearts of the dying with 
solemn joy, and merged the agony of dissolution in 
the clear vision of an open heaven. These are the 
highest, the most benignant ministries that have ever 
been or ever can be rendered to humanity. Christian- 
ity has rendered them and is rendering them to 
thousands upon thousands. It stands alone. No 
other (so-called) religion, no other type of belief or 
unbelief, can be brought into momentary comparison 
with it. Those who have made these experiments 
testify with one heart and voice to the source of their 
virtue, their peace, their joy. The greatly good, if 
crowned, will cast down their crowns before Christ, 
saying, " Thou alone art worthy." The heavily af- 
flicted have found consolation, because they have 
trodden the wine-press, not alone, but leaning on the 
sufferer of Calvary. The dying have looked so stead- 
fastly with the inward eye on the countenance of 
their risen Lord, that the vision has not infrequently 
seemed phototyped on the fleshly orb. Are all these 
successful experiments to pass for nothing, while the 
commingling of an acid and an alkali shall be vaunted 
as proclaiming a fundamental law of nature? I be- 
lieve in the teaching of the acid and the alkali, even 



1 86 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

though the experiment be but once performed. Shall 
I, can I, doubt the thousand upon thousand-fold experi- 
ment of the commingling — with gracious and glorious 
issues, indicating eternal laws of the spiritual world — 
of the life and soul of Jesus Christ with the life and 
soul of his disciple ? 



LECTURE IX. 

CHRISTIANITY AS A RENOVATING POWER IN HUMAN SOCIETV. 

— WHAT IT PROMISES TO ACCOMPLISH. — ITS RAPID PROG- 
RESS IN THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CENTURIES. — INFLUENCES 
OPPOSED TO IT. — ITS POWER OVER PUBLIC SENTIMENT. — 
ITS AGENCY IN DOMESTIC LIFE. — AS REGARDS SLAVERY. 

— IN THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF GOVERNMENT. — IN 
THE RELIEF OF HUMAN WANT AND SUFFERING. — NO 
OTHER RELIGION TO BE COMPARED WITH IT. 

TN my last Lecture I exhibited the results of indi- 
-^ vidual experiment or experience with regard to 
Christianity. These might be decisive as to the 
pre-eminent worth of the religion, even were the 
instances in which it has done its full work very 
few. Indeed, the argument from experiment was 
never felt with more force than in the apostolic age, 
when the Christian type of character had very few 
specimens, yet was both attractive from its novelty, 
and peculiarly Christlike from the personal intimacy 
of those who bore it with Jesus. But the efficacy 
of Christianity can be thoroughly tested only by 
ascertaining what it has done for society, communi- 
ties, nations, the human race. It is not, however, 
incumbent upon us to show that it has effected all 
that we might antecedently have expected from a 
divinely promulgated religion. This is a matter in 



1 88 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

which we have no data or precedents by which to 
graduate our expectations. Our short Uves may make 
the cycles of the Divine Providence seem slow and 
long. The two questions which we need to answer 
with regard to Christianity are : i. Has it done for 
man all that its Founder promised } and 2. Has any 
other religion done as much for man, or even placed 
itself in this respect in favorable comparison with 
Christianity ? 

We will first inquire, Has Christianity done for 
man all that its Founder promised } He predicted 
that it would be early preached throughout the then 
known world ; that its growth at the outset would be 
rapid ; that it would encounter the severest persecu- 
tion and the most strenuous antagonism ; that its 
immediate effect would be to send not peace, but a 
sword upon the earth ; that it would not lead to the 
establishment of a theocracy, or to the separation of 
his disciples from the rest of mankind, but that Chris- 
tians and non-Christians would remain side by side, 
as wheat and tares in a field ; that, however, his 
religion would gradually modify existing institutions 
and habits, without external show, by a quiet interior 
working, like that of the lesiven in the mass of mois- 
tened meal, thus making all things new, not by sudden 
revolution, but by slow and often insensible stages of 
progress. Let us see how far these predictions have 
been fulfilled. 

The early growth of Christianity is without prec- 
edent or parallel in human history. Within a 
century after its Founder's death it had been 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE OLDER RELIGIONS. 1 89 

received by multitudes in every region of the then 
civilized world, and had made numerous disciples in 
those great eastern empires that lay wholly beyond 
the reach of Grecian and Roman culture. Within two 
centuries there was more of learning and philosophy 
in the Church than outside of it ; in Alexandria, 
which had supplanted Athens as the world's centre 
of erudition, almost all the distinguished scholars were 
Christians ; and the Platonic philosophy, especially, 
had scarcely any but Christians among its eminent 
disciples, while it had furnished not a few of the 
Christian martyrs. Within three centuries, Christi- 
anity had mounted the throne of the Caesars ; the 
cross had become the proudest ensign of power and 
state ; and the idolatry whose shattered temples and 
statues in Athens and Rome modern art may copy, 
but can never equal, had become literally Paganism, 
and — though at uncertain intervals stimulated into a 
brief revival in the Italian cities — had for the most 
part only obscure pagans or villagers for its votaries. 
Of the ten successive persecutions enumerated by 
ecclesiastical historians of the old school, the greater 
part were wars of extermination, waged with the 
whole force of the empire against the new faith ; 
yet the agents of the imperial power had such success 
in extinguishing Christianity as a little group of emi- 
grants might hope to have in trampling out the fire in 
a burning prairie. 

Christianity in its progress had to contend with 
religions which had their roots in immemorial antiquity, 
were intertwined with the whole fabric of society, 



IpO CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

were intimately associated with domestic and civic 
life, and were made beautiful and glorious by the 
highest art and the most finished literature to which 
human genius has given birth. 

Still more hopeless seemed the conflict of Christi- 
anity with the grossest moral corruption. Art and 
poetry, music and song, had become the satelUtes of 
vice. Philosophy — with exceptions, illustrious, in- 
deed, but few — had relaxed her stern features, and 
under the broad charter of Epicureanism smiled on 
excess and licentiousness, and employed all her 
acumen in seeking paths to happiness that might 
not trespass on the confines of virtue. Gross sensu- 
ality was less the recreation than the business, aim, 
and end, of large numbers who occupied the highest 
places in station, wealth, and culture. The only 
public amusements were such as ministered to the 
coarsest and vilest passions, — the contests of wild 
beasts, the deadly combats of gladiators, the tearing 
of criminals limb from limb in the amphitheatre, the 
representation of all that was most foul and obscene 
in comedy. Vices that have no longer a name among 
men were glorified in ode and epigram, and sanctioned 
b}'' the example of the so-called guardians of the public 
virtue. 

Under all these unpropitious influences, Christi- 
anity seemed placed at the greater disadvantage by 
the obscurity of its Founder and his associates. He, 
born in a manger, reared in a despised village, bearing 
the reproachful name of a Galilean, often houseless 
and destitute, the companion of humble fishermen ; 



PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. I9I 

the eleven who tool^jup the standard of the infant 
faith when it dropped from his hands, iUiterate, in- 
experienced, unhonored men, re-enforced in the early- 
stages of their work by but one associate of large 
attainments and masterly ability, and that one bearing 
the stigma — degrading everywhere out of Palestine 
— of Jewish parentage, — these are the destined crea- 
tors of a new era, and founders of a spiritual sover- 
eignty to which supreme earthly power shall own 
allegiance. These disciples, ignorant of every lan- 
guage but their own native patois of Hebrew alloyed 
with Chaldee, and a rude Greek bristling with strange 
Hebrew idioms, are to proclaim the Gospel through- 
out and beyond the Roman empire. Unskilled in 
rhetorical arts, they are to persuade those familiar 
with the traditions and successors of Cicero and 
Hortensius. Unpractised in logic, they are to dis- 
pute in the schools of philosophers. They are to go, 
not to corners and by-places, but to the radiating 
centres of civilization and culture, interpreting the 
Unknown God among the monuments of Athenian 
genius, preaching the self-denying and hardy virtues 
in luxurious and effeminate Corinth, teaching the 
empress city of the world to bow to the sceptre of 
the King of kings. 

With all these opposing influences and unfavor- 
able circumstances, the progress, nay, the continued 
existence of Christianity is the miracle of the ages. 
If the religion was man-devised and earth-born, its 
surviving the crucifixion of its Founder was intrinsi- 
cally less probable and credible than the rising of 



192 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Lazarus from his four days' death slumber. The 
early history of Christianity, however, accords in 
this respect with the predictions of Christ ; and — 
what is more to our present purpose — it furnishes 
an experimental evidence of its capacity for extended 
propagation, that is, of its fitness to meet the varying 
demands, conditions, and needs of universal humanity, 
— a fitness of which it is now giving proof, as in primi- 
tive times, by the revival in our own century of the 
missionary spirit, and by the eminent success of 
Christian propagandism among races debased by 
centuries of barbarous or savage life, and in their 
obdurate stupidity presenting a far less inviting soil 
for spiritual tilth than the fields so promptly made 
white for the harvest in the time of the apostles. 

But what has Christianity done for the world } 
Wherein is modern Christian civilization in advance 
of the old Greek and Roman civilization which it 
superseded } It must be admitted that the outward 
transformation of society has been far less radical and 
thorough than a Christian optimist of the first century 
would have anticipated. The vision of the seer of 
the Apocalypse, to whose prophetic eye the ages seem 
to have been foreshortened, and the far-off future to 
have looked very near, is immeasurably more remote 
now than it was in his view. Yet there are many 
aspects in which old things have passed away, and all 
things have become new. 

In the first place, the greatest of all transformations 
may be marked in the relation borne by vice and sin 
to public opinion. There are many respects in which 



CHRISTIANITY AND PUBLIC OPINION 1 93 

portions of Christendom are hardly less corrupt than 
was the Gentile world in the time of Christ. But 
moral evil is now nowhere beheld with complacency 
and approval. Undoubtedly there is in circulation 
now as vile literature as the foulest passages in Hor- 
ace, Ovid, Catullus, or Martial ; but, if so, it is to be 
found only in the slums and sewers of society, while 
their poems were dedicated to emperors and courtiers, 
were in the hands of the most refined and cultivated 
persons, and were in harmony with the purest taste 
of their times. Naples is believed by those conver- 
sant with its lowest depths to be hardly less depraved 
than when it was the second Corinth, only coarser, 
but not less dissolute than its antetype. But the 
excavations in Pompeii show that what is now secret 
and under the ban of the Church and the law, was 
then paraded everywhere ; so that homes, places of 
public concourse, and even temples, must have been 
nurseries of the vilest licentiousness, and Sodom can 
hardly have invited her doom by a more utter destitu- 
tion of the semblance of virtue than did the cities — 
suburbs and imitators of Naples — that were buried 
under the ashes of Vesuvius. In our own country, 
venality, bribery, peculation, defalcation, and corrup- 
tion, on the part of men in office, trust, power, and 
high position, could hardly find more than their par- 
allel in the worst days of Rome ; Verres might seem 
to have been the patron saint of large numbers of 
our commissaries, Indian agents, and revenue detec- 
tives ; and no pro-consul can have been more rapa- 
cious than some of our public men who exercised 

9 



94 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 



proconsular jurisdiction in our southern cities during 
the late rebellion. But before Christ there was no 
sensitiveness of the public conscience on these mat- 
ters. Thus it was long the recognized usage in Rome 
for an edile to incur enormous debts in furnishing 
public shows and entertainments, with the under- 
standing that he was to reimburse himself by the 
spoils of the province which in due course of time 
would fall to his administration ; and it is reckoned as 
among Cicero's special titles to honor and admiration 
— a solitary distinction — that, when he had the gov- 
ernment of a province, he committed neither theft nor 
robbery. Cicero, who, so far as I can remember, does 
not in his ethical treatises pass in a single instance a 
favorable judgment on an immoral act, tells the story 
of the two foremost citizens of Rome, men of high 
reputation, openly receiving legacies by a will which 
every one knew to be forged, as retaining-fees for 
their declining to advocate the cause of the rightful 
heir. He cites, as a case in which even Stoic moral- 
ists were divided in opinion, the question, whether if 
a wise man — that is, a truly virtuous man — hadigno- 
rantly received counterfeit money, he may knowingly 
use it in the payment of his debts. You cannot now 
find the man who approves theft or fraud of any kind, or 
will dare to defend or excuse it. The men who are 
false to their trusts may cover up or deny their of- 
fences, and may, by corrupt means, retain and extend 
the power they abuse ; but they could not stand a 
single day in face of the clear proof of their guilt. The 
Credit Mobilier would not have been out of keeping 



CHRISTIANITY IN DOMESTIC LIFE. I95 

with the best usage jji^Rome. Here it has driven its 
detected accomplices, in spite of undoubted public ser- 
vices and high religious pretensions, into the grave, or 
a living death of enduring ignominy. The case is the 
same throughout Christendom with every form of vice 
or crime. No one ventures to approve it. No one is 
bold enough to apologize for it. However it may 
abound and run riot, its actors and abettors are 
ashamed of it. Were they, in conclave, to construct a 
code of morals from their own sincere conviction and 
belief, it would be a Christian code. We have here, 
assuredly, an immense gain, in the conversion of the 
public conscience, in the estabhshing of a Nemesis in 
the individual consciences of evil-doers. Jesus has, at 
least, produced a conviction of sin, a pervading sense 
of right, and a rectitude of moral judgment, of which, 
before his time, we have but few traces. 

■ We will next consider the agency of Christianity in 
domestic life. At the Christian era, the conjugal 
relation, whose stability is the sole safeguard for the 
peace and well-being of the family, was held in rever- 
ence nowhere in the civilized world. Divorce, in 
theory justifiable on the slightest grounds, was facili- 
tated by law, sanctioned by custom, and held blame- 
less in the best public opinion. In Judaea, the Mosaic 
law, which, in the ages when writing was a rare 
accomplishment, interposed serious difficulties by 
requiring the malecontent husband to furnish the wife 
with a legal document, had ceased to operate as a 
check. In Athens, there was not only liberty of di- 
vorce without cause, but the husband had a legal right 



196 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

to sell his wife into second nuptials to which she was 
not a consenting party ; and, in case a father died, 
leaving no children except a married daughter, the 
nearest kinsman of his name could legally dissolve 
her marriage and make her his own wife. In Rome, 
men and women alike exercised the legal right of 
.divorce, with a sole view to new marriages ; and there 
were women of illustrious rank who, as Seneca says, 
reckoned the years not by consuls, but by husbands, 
divorced to marry, married to divorce. The malign 
associations connected with the term noverca (step- 
mother) of which the literature of the Augustan age 
furnishes numerous instances, grew not from that 
office legitimately assumed, but from the frequency 
with which an artful and intriguing woman contrived 
to supplant the mother of the family, and of course 
could hardly have any other relations with that 
mother's children than those of mutual distrust, sii?^ 
picion, and hatred.* Under such a domestic regime, 
there was, of necessity, no home-culture for the chil- 
dren ; nor was even home-love able to survive the 
wrenches and outrages to which it was perpetually 
doomed. The mother was liable to be separated for 
ever from her children before they could know the 
preciousness of her love, and it was the prime en- 
deavor of her rival and successor to supersede them 
in their father's affection for the benefit of her own 
children. We have abundant evidence that in the 
richer families children were left till adult years 

* See Appendix, note M. 



HOME CREATED BY CHRISTIANITY. 1 97 

almost entirely tojhe care and training of slaves, 
without even the pretence of parental supervision. 

The primitive power of life and death over the 
child, though not legally repealed, had fallen into dis- 
use, in consequence, less of growing refinement, than 
of the massing of powers that had been distributed 
into the more and more autocratic sway of the em- 
peror : yet still there seems to have been not a little of 
tolerated, nay, legalized infanticide in the case of feeble 
or sickly children, and of those whom it was incon- 
venient to bring up ; a license claimed by Plato, sanc- 
tioned by Aristotle, and, so far as I know, accepted 
without contradiction in all classic antiquity. St. 
Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, speaks of the 
Gentile world in general as "without natural affec- 
tion." How far this applied to the Roman people of 
his time we may learn from the frequency with which 
the property of fathers was wholly diverted from their 
children, through the devices of stepmothers, the 
intrigues of legacy-hunters, and the adoption of chil- 
dren from motives of interest or ambition that have 
no parallel in modern society. Nor yet could the son 
acquire any thing of his own, or dispose of the earnings 
of his own industry, with the single exception that 
under Augustus the wages of sons that served in the 
army were decreed to be their own property ; this, 
however, not on the score of right and justice, but to 
facilitate the recruiting of the military service with 
native citizens.* 

This cursory sketch of the condition of home-life under 

* See Appendix, Note N. 



198 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

the ancient civilization may account for the absence of 
any word corresponding to home in the classic lan- 
guages, and for the plural form, cEdes, in which a house 
is commonly designated in the Latin ; for the house 
consisted of a quadrangle of apartments, with separate 
entrances from the central court common to all, and 
there was no sentiment of family union to unify in 
thought and speech the several portions of the domi- 
cile. 

We have seen what the family was when Christ 
came into the world. He re-established the family 
by pronouncing the marriage covenant sacred and 
inviolable. Under his auspices it at once became a 
religious bond, sanctioned by prayer and by the em- 
blems of the redemption-sacrifice. Tertullian, the 
earliest of the Latin fathers, writes : "The Church 
prescribes the contract ; holy rites confirm it ; the 
benediction seals it ; God ratifies it. The believing 
husband and wife bear the same yoke : they are of one 
mind ; they pray together ; they fast together ; they 
are. together in worship, at the Lord's table, in adver- 
sity and in prosperity. Divorce is now prohibited ; 
for what God has joined man shall not separate, lest 
he sin against God. He who has joined alone shall 
separate." Thus, so fast as Christianity was diffused, 
chaste and permanent homes, with their shelter, nur- 
ture, and love, everywhere grew into being. Con- 
stantine, though himself probably not very profoundly 
penetrated with the spirit of Christianity, was, never- 
theless, greatly under the influence of the clergy ; 
and, in every feature of his reformatory legislation, we 



CHRISTIAN LEGISLATION FOR CHILDREN 1 99 

trace their hand and the hand of the Master whom 
they served. He, by his imperial edict, brought the 
Hberty of divorce within restrictions almost as narrow 
as those of the Gospel rule, extending the license be- 
yond that limit only to cases in which the accused 
party had been guilty of homicide, sorcery, or the vio- 
lation of sepulchres. In this direction legislation 
rapidly grew more and more rigid, until the one crime 
which is in itself divorce became the only recognized 
ground for it.* 

In behalf of children legislation equally followed 
the leading of Christian sentiment, and gave form and 
body to its spirit. Constantine, in one of his earliest 
edicts after his so-called conversion, for the purpose, 
as he said, of preventing infanticide, provided for the 
feeding and clothing of the children of destitute 
parents from the public treasury. At nearly the 
same time, he secured for the benefit of adult children 
the income of various offices and professions in both 
Church and State, equally with the wages of military 
service. The succeeding Christian emperors vindi- 
cated still farther the rights of children, though the 
very religion which inspired their edicts made them 
no longer necessary ; f for the hearts of the fathers 
were now turned to the children, and of the children 
to the fathers, so that from that age onward the cases 
of parental oppression and injustice, whether in life 
or by will, before normal, have been so rare and ex- 
ceptional as to arrest general attention and to call 
forth emphatic condemnation. 

* See Appendix, note O. t See Appendix, note P. 



200 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

From these beginnings sprang the domestic hfe of 
modern Christendom, — indissoluble marriage the 
corner-stone of the edifice, the basis of all the institu- 
tions and customs, amenities and endearments, that 
make ordinary homes peaceful and loving, truly 
Christian homes types of the family unions in heaven. 
It is worthy of remark that the marriage institution 
has been assailed in our own time by the very. men, 
women, and classes of people who profess to have 
outgrown Christianity ; that among these the more 
advanced, as they term themselves, would retrograde 
to the condition of things in the most licentious days 
of Athens and of Rome ; and that such modifications 
of the gospel law of divorce — till of late universal in 
Christendom — as have been made in this country and 
in Europe have been resolutely opposed at every stage 
by the Church, and carried through under the disap- 
proval and protest of its loyal ministers and members. 

I am aware that it is sometimes said that civilized 
Europe owes the purity and sacredness of home rela- 
tions to the irruption of the Northern tribes into Gaul 
and Italy, and that the rudiments of the Christian home 
are to be found in the Gennania of Tacitus. I would 
reply, first, that the Roman home-life in the best days 
of the republic was equally pure with that of the Ger- 
mans at the Christian era, and this, because, in either 
case, idleness and luxury had not engendered vice ; 
secondly, that the domestic revolution had become 
co-extensive with Christianity before the German 
element had modified the institutions of southern 
Europe ; thirdly, that the description of Tacitus was 



SLAVERY BEFORE CHRIST. 20I 

very far from being applicable to the Goths, Huns, 
and Vandals, who^were among the chief agents in the 
destruction of the Western Empire ; and, fourthly, 
that the influence of Christianity on men's home rela- 
tions may be traced as clearly in those of the southern 
nations that never had any considerable northern ad- 
mixture, as in those stocks which became transformed 
by northern grafts. 

Homes worthy of the name are, then, among the 
gifts of Christianity, and the contrast of modern with 
ancient civilization in this regard is of itself suffi- 
cient to place Christianity foremost among the benefi- 
cent forces that have acted on human society. 

The work which Christianity has done in the 
amelioration and abolition of slavery constitutes an- 
other of the experimental proofs of its efficacy. In 
all antiquity, so far as we know, domestic slavery 
existed as if by a necessity or law of human nature, 
without rebuke or question even from the sev^erest 
moralists. The lapse of a free man into slavery, in 
consequence of debt, captivity, or conquest, was very 
easy ; and as the slave was often of the same or an 
equal race with his master, or even his superior, as in the 
case of the numerous Greek slaves in Rome, the social 
wrong, though not one whit more utterly unjustifiable, 
must have been more galling and depressing than 
when the enslaved are of an inferior race. In Rome, 
by a law of the Twelve Tables, a debtor who remained 
insolvent after an imprisonment of sixty days, might 
either be sold into slavery, or killed and his body 
divided among his creditors. In many communities 

9* 



202 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

the slaves largely outnumbered the free population. 
In Athens there were at one time twenty-one thou- 
sand citizens and four hundred thousand slaves. In 
the little island of ^gina there were four hundred 
and seventy thousand slaves. Single citizens of Rome 
sometimes owned from ten to twenty thousand. 

Slaves in the Roman Empire had no legal rights, 
not even the right to life, and no mode of redress for 
injury. Their evidence was never taken except by 
torture. If a master was murdered by an unknown 
person, it was not unusual to put to death all his 
slaves, even to the number of several thousands ; and 
slaves were not infrequently set up as targets for the 
fatal archery of the master and his guests, or thrown 
into the fish-pond to improve the flavor of the lam- 
preys, or put to death to test some novel weapon 
or mode of slaying, or killed in the wantonness of 
drunken sport, or crucified for breaking a vase, or 
dropping a turbot on its way to the table, or mistaking 
an order of the most trivial import. 

Christ and his apostles made no violent onslaught 
on slavery : if they had, it would have been of no 
avail. But they recognized the slave's equal humanity 
with his master, his equal position before God, his 
equal privileges under the Gospel. Paul sends the 
fugitive Onesimus home to Philemon, no longer as a 
slave, but as a brother beloved, and enjoins it upon 
Philemon in the name of all that is sacred thus to 
receive him. Masters are reminded that with their 
Master in heaven there is no respect of persons, and, 
as in his sight, are bidden to render justice and equity 
to their slaves. 



CHRISTIAN LEGISLATION FOR SLAVES. 203 

Accordingly, from the Epistle to Philemon all 
through the early^^hristian centuries, among the 
many historical references — direct and incidental — 
to slavery, there is not one in which the Church does 
not show herself the friend of the slave. The Church 
never admitted the distinction between bond and free 
as creating any difference under her jurisdiction. 
Quite a considerable number of the martyrs, held from 
the first in the highest reverence, and among the ear- 
liest canonized, were slaves. Slaves and their chil- 
dren were trained and ordained for offices in the 
Church, and not a few of the bishops came from the 
servile rank. The emancipation of slaves was repre- 
sented as among the most Christian works that could 
be performed ; the business was conducted and regis- 
tered in the church or through its officials ; and, after 
Sunday began to be observed by the suspension of 
secular labor, this alone, of all kinds of business, was 
deemed fit to be done on Sunday. Slaves that any- 
how became the property of particular churches were 
almost invariably set free, and it was early regarded 
as damaging to the character of an ecclesiastic that 
he should remain a slaveholder. 

With and after Constantine, the law kept even pace 
with this growth of Christian opinion and feeling. An 
edict of Constantine first made the killing of a slave 
criminal homicide ; and this edict has a painful histori- 
cal value in enumerating, as punishable, various most 
horrible ways of putting slaves to death ; which, of 
course, would not have been named had they not 
been practised. Thencconward there was an un- 



204 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

broken series of enactments, relieving slaves from 
disabilities, augmenting their rights, and encouraging 
their emancipation ; till at length, in the twelfth cen- 
tury, at the very climax of the power of the Church, 
there remained not a vestige of domestic slavery in 
Christendom.* 

To the shame of modern Christianity, slavery re- 
appeared in our western world ; but it would never 
have survived the initial enterprise, had the arm of 
the Church been long enough to reach it across 
the intervening ocean. It had grown with amazing 
rapidity into a giant wrong and sin before Christian 
sentiment could be organized and combined in oppo- 
sition to it. On its own soil it contrived to bribe or 
awe into silence the feebler and less loyal officials of 
the Church, and to drive away or keep away those 
who would have declared their Lord's whole counsel. 
Yet there never was a time when large numbers and 
large bodies of Christians did not in the name of 
Christ denounce slavery and disclaim all fellowship 
with its abettors ; and, from all Christian organiza- 
tions that remained quiescent, there were numerous 
secessions of earnest and devout men and women, 
who raised a revolt against the Church in the name 
of its Lord and Master. At length the burden of 
guilt which Christian Europe had thrown off long 
before she knew America has been lifted from this 
western world by the overmastering might of Chris- 
tian sentiment, with the entire force of interest, 
policy, inveterate prejudice, and political time-serving 

* See Appendix, note Q. 



CHRISTIANITY AND GOVERNMENT. 20% 

arrayed against it. We cannot believe that the work 
will ever need to b^^one again ; and, in this final abo- 
lition of slavery, Christianity has been nothing less 
than revolutionary, annulling a class distinction be- 
tween human owners and human chattels which had 
existed from the very earliest stages of society that 
have left any vestiges of their history. 

An equally entire revolution has taken place in the 
theory, and to a large degree in the practice, of gov- 
ernment. Said Jesus, " Among the nations the princes 
exercise dominion over them, and they that are great 
exercise authority upon them. But among you, who- 
soever will be great, let him be your minister ; and 
whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your 
servant ; even as the Son of Man came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister." The idea of gov- 
ernment implied in these words does not seem to 
have entered into the thought of the ancient world. 
There were, indeed, humane and beneficent rulers ; 
but they were not so ex officio, if I may use the 
phrase, — by virtue of their position, and as fulfilling 
the only condition on which they could rightfully hold 
their places. Power, in the single or multiform head 
of a nation, had its rights, but not its commensurate 
obligations. There was, indeed, an excess of tyranny 
which a people of spirit would not endure ; but that 
within certain limits the ruler should accumulate 
treasures for his own sole benefit, wage war for his 
own sole glory, and conduct his administration for 
ends in the main self-centred, was precisely what was 
expected, and deemed entirely legitimate. Now it 



2o6 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

must be admitted that there are in ancient history- 
few more atrocious specimens of unprincipled, selfish, 
and brutal despotism than have been exhibited in 
modern Europe, and, in the kingdom of the Two 
Sicilies at least, almost to the present day. Yet 
you will at this moment find it to be the universal 
opinion in Christendom, that government has a right 
to exist only for the sake of the governed ; that the 
selfish exercise of power is an abuse of power ; that 
hereditary rights, where they are recognized, are justi- 
fied only by the necessities of civic and social order, 
and that they impose charges and services for the 
body-politic fully equal to the privileges which they 
confer. At the present time it is the most absolute 
governments that are the most paternal ; it is the 
most highly privileged aristocracies that are doing 
the most for their fellow-countrymen and for human- 
ity ; many of those who hold chief places in the state 
acting under the immediate influence of the evangelic 
principle, that rank and authority can be rightfully- 
held only for purposes of service ; and others fully 
iware that this sentiment is so widely diffused that 
they can ignore it only to their own ruin. Strange 
to say, there is more of the old heathen notion of 
irresponsible right, and less of the spirit of service, 
in the officials of our own country than in those of 
any other country in Christendom ; but, because we 
have retroceded from the days when our great men 
were our chief servants, we should not blind ourselves 
to the approach of the whole sisterhood of nations 
to the ground which it is our honor to have been 



CHRISTIAN BENEFICENCE. 207 

the first to occupy, our burning shame to have 
yielded. ^ 

I have not time to enter fully into the various other 
aspects in which Christianity has shown itself a trans- 
forming and renovating power. But there is one of 
its benign ministries, so manifest that only he who 
was blind at noonday could overlook it, and so famil- 
iarly known as to need no long or labored exposition. 
I refer to the various forms of public, social, collective, 
institutional charity. These are all of Christian origin. 
There was, undoubtedly, almsgiving, kindness, gener- 
osity, among the ancients of classic history, still more 
among the Hebrews, whose poor-laws — at the Chris- 
tian era obsolete — are redolent of a more than human 
wisdom and love ; but when Christ came, there was 
no organized provision for wants, needs, or infirmities 
of any description ; no plan by which the benefactions 
or services of the rich or the able could be combined 
and systematized for the benefit of the poor or the 
suffering. The nearest approach to such charities 
was the distribution of wheat among the Roman 
populace at the charge of the public treasury, and 
the largesses given to the people by aspirants for 
their favor. These, however, were not regarded as 
charitable donatives ; but the former as the means of 
keeping the mob quiet, the latter as an outlay to be 
remunerated ten times over when the votes thus 
purchased should place the plunder of a province at 
the candidate's disposal. But no sooner was the 
Christian Church gathered than the poor became 
its care. The primitive deacons were the first official 



2o8 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

guardians of the poor of whom history gives us know- 
ledge. The earhest systematic contribution for the 
rehef of the needy was that taken up in the churches 
out of Palestine for the sufferers by famine in and 
about Jerusalem. We cannot go back to a time when 
almsgiving was not so essential a part of the service 
of the eucharist, that, with the reserved portions of 
the sacred elements carried by the deacons to all who 
were necessarily absent, substantial supplies from the 
offertory were bestowed upon the needy. Particular 
types of calamity and suffering had appropriate pro- 
vision made for them. The sick, especially the lepers, 
were sedulously cared for ; large sums were raised 
for the redemption of captives ; orphan children 
became everywhere the children of the Church ; 
strangers, for whom and enemies there had been 
one and the same name, were now honored guests 
for the sake of him who owns, as rendered to himself, 
every generous service and kind office in the name of 
a common humanity. Even in what are called the 
dark ages, though many lesser lights were veiled, the 
lamp of charity suffered no eclipse ; and Christendom 
emerged from those misnamed centuries, with an 
apparatus of relief for want and misery, considered 
with reference to the condition and habits of those 
times, hardly less efficient than our present modes of 
philanthropic ministration. 

To come down to our own day, when we consider 
the endless diversity and vast multitude of institutions 
and appliances for charitable ends of every description ; 
the immense number of liberal givers and self-devot- 



ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIMENT. 



209 



ing workers ; the still greater number of those who, 
like the widow at the temple, contribute from their 
poverty to the Lord's treasury ; and the uniform pro- 
portion borne by the sincerity and fervor of Christian 
faith and piety to the promptness and fulness of offer- 
ings and services, — we have but a repetition, magnified 
and multiplied a thousandfold, of the answer of Jesus 
to John's question, " Art thou he that should come, or 
look we for another" ? 

I named a second question as belonging to the 
subject of this Lecture, — Has any other religion done 
as much for man as Christianity has, or even placed 
itself in this respect in favorable comparison with 
Christianity ? I do not believe that there is any 
need of adding a word to the monosyllabic answer, 
No. Certainly there is no one of the particulars 
that have been named, in which Mohammedanism or 
Buddhism can be even alleged to have had an equally 
or similarly renovating and benignant influence ; and 
we know of no other religions which it would not 
be irrelevant to name in such a connection. 

Christianity, then, has done for man what it pro- 
mised to do through the lips and pens of its Author 
and his apostles, and it has performed for man such 
services as no other religion has begun or pretended 
to render. It has thus, on an extended scale, as in its 
action on individual character, sustained the test of 
experiment. It has shown itself as from God by doing 
the works of God. It has attested its divinity by the 
very marks and tokens which on a priori grounds we 
should expect a divine religion to exhibit. It has 



210 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

proved its heavenly birth by its heavenly gifts and 
ministries to man. 

Experiment thus confirms testimony, and gives us 
added assurance that we are not following cunningly 
devised fables when we own in Jesus Christ the Son 
of God and the Saviour of the world. 



LECTURE X. 

in. INTUITION. — SCIENTIFIC INTUITION. — CHRISTIAN INTUI- 
TION. — INTUITION DEFINED. — OBJECTIVE INTUITION. 

SUBJECTIVE INTUITION OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. — OF TRUTHS 
APPERTAINING TO GOD. — OF TRUTHS APPERTAINING TO 
CHRIST. — EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF INTUITION. — SUMMARY. 

T PROPOSE this evening to compare the evidence 
-^ of intuition for the ultimate and fundamental 
truths of science with the evidence for the alleged 
truths of Christianity derived from the same source. 

Intuition is the last test of science. When facts 
and phenomena have been duly collated, when experi- 
ments have been fully made, when partial inductions 
have been generalized, and a law or principle of ex- 
tended application has been reached, it seems to the 
scientific man a necessary truth. He sees, not only 
that it is, but that it must be. It becomes self-evi- 
dent, and forms thenceforward a part of his scientific 
consciousness. No universal scientific truth is fully 
established, until it is thus intuitively recognized as, 
•of a priori necessity, appertaining to the department of 
science which it defines and comprehends. 

A like intuition the Christian possesses as the 
result of his experience. He may at the outset rest 
for his belief mainly on testimony ; he may enter on 



212 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE, 

a series of experiments in Christian living with faith 
rather than with knowledge : but, if he is true to his 
own soul, the time comes when he sees and knows 
from his own spiritual intuitions the verities of his 
religion ; the excellence of its precepts ; the beauty, 
holiness, loveliness, power of its Author. There is a 
stage at which argument or cavil may impair or over- 
throw his belief. There is a stage at which the truths 
of Christianity and the divine attributes of its Founder 
have so become a part of his own consciousness, that 
no force of reasoning can by any possibility dislodge 
them. Here, for instance, is a lone widow, who has 
been a mark for all the shafts of adverse fortune. 
Poor, infirm, lowly in estate, she has no treasure but 
her Bible, no hope but in its promises, no fountain of 
joy but that which flows "fast by the oracles of God." 
Yet she has a peace more profound, a joy more in- 
tense, than worlds could give. Her soul is a living 
transcript of the evangelic record. Her prayer is not 
the groping after an unknown God, but, as it were, a 
face-to-face communion. Her heaven is not in the 
far-off future, but in her own beatific experience. 
She has realized the promises. She has entered into 
the rest that remaineth for the people of God. Ply 
her with all the infidel arguments that have been 
started from the days of Celsus to the present mo- 
ment, you cannot ruffle for an instant the serenity of 
her faith and trust. She knows whom she has be- 
lieved. His life throbs in her veins. His words are 
strung in the living fibres of her whole being. She 
feels herself transformed into his image, — a member 



INTUITION DEFINED. 213 

of his body ; and who^hall separate her from the love 
of Christ ? Now this intuitive knowledge of Chris- 
tianity has been possessed by thousands for every one 
who has intuitive knowledge of scientific truths. 

It is, moreover, the prerogative of Christianity over 
all other religions that its alleged truths can thus be- 
come intuitions. There could have been no intuition 
of the ceremonial law, which forms an essential part 
of Judaism. There can be no intuition of the vaga- 
ries of the Koran, of the avatars of the Hindoo my- 
thology, of the chimaeras of Buddhism. But there is 
not a (so-called) truth of Christianity, which, if true, 
is not of such a nature that it may, in some form or 
measure, enter into the consciousness, and thus rest 
on the same evidence on which we believe in our own 
existence. This statement cannot indeed be made as 
to the individual facts of the biography of Christ, nor 
yet as to the objective side of certain Christian doc- 
trines : but the facts of Christ's life are mere tokens 
of and pointers to the spiritual relations in which he 
professes to stand to the individual soul, as a sure 
guide, as a safe exemplar, as an infallible teacher, as 
an all-sufficient Saviour, and these relations, if real, 
may all become subjects of consciousness ; while of 
the doctrines of Christianity there is not one which is 
simply and solely objective. 

Let us not, however, content ourselves with general 
statements. Let us see what intuition comprehends, 
and how far, or under what conditions, it is availing 
as a source of evidence. 

Intuition is inlooking. It is intellectual perception. 



214 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

It is that apprehension of the truth which comes not 
from reasoning or proof, but from the nature of the 
case, from the nature of our own minds, or both. 
What we perceive intuitively shines either in its own 
Hght, or in Ught which we ourselves cast upon it. It 
either is self-evident, or it has the attestation of our 
own consciousness, and needs no other proof. 

Intuition may thus be either objective or subjective. 
We may either so look into the object-matter of our 
thought or inquiry as to see in it that which could 
not but have been, — that which, once apprehended, 
is its own sufficient evidence ; or we may so look in 
upon our remembered and current experience as to 
recognize in it truths so manifest as to need no other 
proof than that of consciousness. Objective intuition 
has its chief scope in the mathematical and physical 
sciences ; subjective, in mental and moral philosophy. 
Both objective and subjective are claimed in behalf of 
Christianity. 

I will first speak of objective intuition. Christian- 
ity alone gives us a tenable theory of the universe. 
Independently of revelation, there are in the universe 
unmistakable and innumerable tokens of design, and 
thus of an intelligent Creator ; of beneficent design, 
and thus of a merciful Creator. There are, in every 
department of nature, not chance coincidences, but 
organisms, processes, and products, which are mani- 
festly adapted to the enjoyment of man and of other 
sentient beings, and which can have no other destina- 
tion, can serve no other purpose. There are, on the 
other hand, no organisms, processes, or products, of 



PROBLEM OF EVIL. 215 

which the necessary^nd inevitable tendency is the 
creation of pain, grief, or misery ; but in the course 
of events physical evil is incidental, or subsidiary to 
greater good ; its agencies, such as may be evaded, 
controlled, neutralized, often transformed and utilized, 
so that in proportion to the growth of man's intelli- 
gence they become subject to his command, and con- 
stantly tend to disappear. Man's own native powers 
of mind and soul, in their normal exercise, in the only 
exercise of them which the developed intellect can 
approve, tend to his self-respect, his growth in intel- 
ligence and capacity, and his enduring happiness. 
There is, however, in human society, and there has 
been in all past ages, an overwhelming amount of 
degradation and misery, almost all of which is visibly 
due to the depraved will of man. To this are charge- 
able, not only the immediate consequences of vice 
and sin, but as surely, though less directly, by far the 
larger part of the poverty, hardship, and physical in- 
firmity and suffering in the world ; for in a commu- 
nity of saints there would be no abject want, no social 
oppression or depression, and probably an ever-dimin- 
ishing heritage of bodily disease and pain. 

That a beneficent Creator should suffer this deterio- 
rated condition of what is in potential capacity his 
noblest work upon earth to remain uncared for, is 
inconceivable. That he should provide in man and 
around him all possible powers of and materials for 
happiness, and yet leave him to make himself vile, 
and to bequeath from generation to generation, to the 
end of time, an accumulating burden of depravity 



2l6 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

and misery, would imply either a lack of power, which 
cannot be in him whose Omnipotence has its record 
in the vastness, order, and harmony of creation ; or 
a lack of love, which cannot be in him whose tender 
mercy is manifested in every realm, nay, in every 
nook, cranny, and crevice of the universe, which is 
not perverted or made unfruitful by human guilt. 
Free agency, which is essential to man's highest dig- 
nity and happiness, may, indeed, in the nature of 
things have rendered his fall and guilt inevitable, not- 
withstanding the infinite goodness of God ; and it 
may be of inestimable benefit to the race as a whole 
that man should have been left in the earlier stages 
of his history to solve all great moral problems by a 
sad experience, which, we believe, is to have immeas- 
urably more than its counterpart in the ultimate reign 
of righteousness. But we should antecedently expect 
to find in the divine economy the antidote and remedy 
for moral evil. This antidote, this remedy, can consist 
only in God's revelation of his being and will ; in the 
establishing on the earth of a regenerating agency ; in 
the forgiveness of sins repented and forsaken ; in help 
for those who seek to be delivered from inherited or 
acquired proclivity to evil ; in a power of amelioration 
and progress for the race in this world ; and in a state 
of being in which human virtue, at best imperfect and 
inchoate here, yet capable of indefinite growth, may 
have its full consummation. In Christianity, and 
nowhere else, we have precisely what might have 
been thus anticipated. We have a revelation of God 
in the person of Christ, of the law of God in his pre- 



THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 217 

cepts and his life ;_a^regenerating power in his whole 
earthly ministry ; the forgiveness of sins in his cross 
and sacrifice ; help for our infirmities in the Holy 
Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son in 
accordance with his promise ; a power of progress in 
his everlasting Gospel ; eternal life made manifest 
in his resurrection. Moreover, by his emphatic 
recognition of the Hebrew Scriptures as authentic, 
we learn that God had never "left himself without 
witness " in the world ; that primeval revelation pre- 
ceded even man's first transgression ; that the knowl- 
edge of divine things, given to man, was lost by 
man ; that this knowledge was at intervals renewed, 
only to be circumscribed and obscured by the depraved 
wills of those on whom it was bestowed ; and thus 
that Christ came, not after ages in which God had 
abandoned men wholly to their own evil devices, but 
as the supreme term of a culminating series of inter- 
positions on his part for the relief, reformation, and 
spiritual training of his human family. 

We thus, and thus only, can reconcile the history of 
man with the being, omnipotence, and infinite love of 
God. We thus, and thus only, have a rational and con- 
sistent theory of the universe, — a God who has never 
forsaken his own work ; a free agency whose proclivity 
to evil has never been left without check or remedy ; 
a redemption and everlasting salvation for all who, 
under whatever culture, are faithful to such light as 
they have received and such law as they know ; a 
provision by which, without annulling human freedom, 
sin is to be purged away, the right to culminate, and 



2l8 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

the reign of God to be ultimately established in the 
realm of living souls no less than in outward nature. 
The system is coherent and complete. It satisfies, 
if I may so speak, the scientific consciousness. To 
the Christian it not only seems to be true, but he 
cannot conceive of its not being true. It comes to 
him through what he receives as the record of 
divine revelation; but it justifies itself, — it is its 
own evidence. Still more, it adds confirmation to 
the very record from which it is derived. We are 
certain, from such evidence as has been presented 
in former Lectures, that the Gospels are genuine 
and authentic ; but evidence of a different and even 
higher type is furnished by the coherence of their 
contents among themselves, and with what beside 
is known of God and man. I say, evidence of a 
higher, not a surer type : for testimony may be — 
and is, as I have attempted to show you in this 
matter — sufficiently multiform, explicit, and strong, 
to produce absolute certainty of conviction ; yet 
there is a more vivid and realizing sense of the 
veracity of the sacred records, when their contents 
thus present intrinsic tokens of their truth. While 
testimony prepares the way for intuition, intuition 
calls forth the testimony of our own apprehensive 
powers to supplement the witnesses from without, 
— indeed, transfers us from the number of those 
who depend on testimony to the list of those who 
themselves bear testimony. 

We pass now to subjective intuition, or the evidence 
of Christian consciousness. As I have said, there is 



INTUITIVE EVIDENCE OF ETHICAL TRUTH. 219 

no alleged truth of Christianity which may not be 
tried by this test, and in behalf of which this evi- 
dence is not claimed. Such is the case, in the first 
place, with the ethics of the Gospel. There were 
in the Sermon on the Mount and in various other 
portions of the teachings of Christ not a few things 
so entirely opposed to the mind, voice, and practice 
of antiquity, as to have made a hard strain upon the 
faith even of the most docile hearers. It is worthy 
of remark that it was not any dogmatic statement, 
but the command to forgive an offending brother 
seven times in a day, that called forth the exclama- 
tion from the disciples, " Lord, increase our faith," — 
forbearance that could not be wearied out by perti- 
nacity in wrong-doing seemed to them so utterly 
unreasonable and impossible. Indeed, had not their 
Master embodied his precept in his life, and re- 
enacted it on the cross in the prayer for his mur- 
derers, it may be doubted whether his followers 
would ever have had faith enough to make experi- 
ment of it. But no one has made trial of it, and 
persevered in so doing, who has not been profoundly 
conscious of its divine excellence ; for it has been as 
proof-armor to the soul against all assaults from with- 
out ; it has blunted the keenest weapons of calumny 
and malevolence ; it has kept the spirit in sweet seren- 
ity under insult, provocation, and violence, and has 
made it more than conqueror in its conflicts with evil. 
Similar has been uniform Christian experience as 
to the seeming paradox that "it is more blessed to 
give than to receive." The imperial glutton craved 



220 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

a hundred palates, that he might multiply indefinitely 
the coarse indulgence of the table. His brutal wish 
is the type of what has been enjoyed by those who 
have followed their Master as he went about doing 
good. They have inwardly fed at every table that 
they have spread for the needy. They have drunk 
living waters from every fountain and rivulet of 
charity that has flowed from their fulness, or trick- 
led from the scanty, yet glad munificence of their 
penury. They have had as many sources of pure 
felicity as there are hearts and lives that they have 
made happy. Above all, when by example, influence, 
and active effort, they have healed men's spiritual 
infirmities, shed light upon their darkened souls, led 
their wandering steps into the path of eternal salva- 
tion, they have literally entered into the joy of their 
Lord, have received immeasurably more than they 
gave, have drawn a revenue beyond all proportion to 
their expenditure, have had in their own beatific 
consciousness the foregleamings of the heaven to 
which they have pointed and led the way. 

Thus, also, have those who have made trial of 
humility found in it exaltation. It has raised them 
above the world. It has given them an unassailable 
position among their brethren. It has in unnumbered 
instances brought them much larger honor and pro- 
founder deference than they disclaimed ; and even 
when this has not been the case, it has fortified 
them against disesteem and misappreciation by the 
consciousness of the honor that comes from God, 
and by the realizing foresight of the chief places 



I 



EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 221 

that shall be theirSj^when the Lord shall find them 
in the lowest room, and shall say to them, " My 
friends, go up higher." 

A like consciousness attests the truths concerning 
God in his relations to man, promulgated through 
Christ. The divine Providence is a truth of con- 
sciousness. That "all things work together for 
good to those who love God," the mature Christian 
needs no longer to learn from the record of the 
apostle ; for the apostle's experience is repeated 
in his own soul. As he looks back on the way in 
which God has led him, he sees that it was for him 
the safe and the best way. He has had trials, but 
they have strengthened his faith and deepened his 
joy. He has had sorrows ; but the bread of affliction 
has been to him the bread of life, — in the valley of 
weeping he has drunk of fountains that flow from 
the river before the throne of God. He has parted 
from those with whom half his own life seemed to go ; 
but they have opened for him new avenues to the 
upper rooms in his Father's house. He has had 
experiences that have loosened his roots in his native 
soil ; but the vine, unearthed, has struck out tendrils 
that have clung closer and climbed higher around the 
tree of eternal life. Thus in the faithful soul is God's 
loving providence so fully verified, that no words of 
holy writ can bear to it more explicit testimony than 
is borne by the inner consciousness of the believer. 

The efficacy of prayer is verified in like manner. 
The Christian knows that he has never prayed in 
vain. True, there have been specific petitions that 



222 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE, 

have not had their specific answers ; but even these 
have been more than answered. So was it with Jesus 
himself, and it is enough for the disciple that he be 
as his Master. He prayed that the cup might pass 
from him, — it passed not ; but there appeared an 
angel from heaven, strengthening him. So the great 
apostle prayed that " the thorn in the flesh " — some 
bodily infirmity which he feared would prove dis- 
abling — might be removed, — it was not removed; 
but it was said to him, " My grace is sufficient for 
thee ; for my strength is made perfect in weakness," 
and he thenceforth gloried in his infirmities, through 
and above which the power of Christ rested upon him. 
The Christian finds that prayer and sin, prayer and 
hopeless sorrow, cannot coexist ; that prayer disarms 
temptation, renders prosperity safe and adversity 
sweet, makes work worship and joy gratitude, his 
home a sanctuary, the house of merchandise his 
Father's house. It more than keeps the soul ; for 
it gives over its guardianship to him of whom it is 
written, " He that keepeth thee will not slumber." 
Thus does the consciousness of the praying soul 
bear perpetual testimony to the words of Jesus, 
" Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye 
shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
you." 

Christian consciousness equally attests the truths 
appertaining to Christ in his relation to the human 
soul. Do you ask. How is it that in this field of 
thought there have been so many diverse, nay, 
opposite theories, while a common consciousness 



HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN INTUITIONS. 223 

ought to make some approach to a common ex- 
pression of itself ? I answer, that the dogmatic dif- 
ferences among Christians relate to those aspects 
of Christ's nature and work which cannot be subjects 
of consciousness ; while as to the part which he bears 
in Christian experience there is a substantial agree- 
ment. Who Christ is, cannot be determined by my 
consciousness ; but I can know what he does, what 
he is, for me, to me, and in me. There is a divine 
side of Christ's work of redemption of which I can- 
not be conscious ; but if he has wrought that work 
for and in me, I can know from my own conscious- 
ness the blessedness of having received the atonement, 
— the inward assurance of forgiveness and reconcili- 
ation with God, — the peace, not as the world gives, 
which flows from the heart of Christ into the heart of 
his disciple. In fine, the Christian is inwardly con- 
scious of influences at work in his heart and upon 
his life, which precisely correspond to the power of 
Christ's death and the power of his resurrection, — 
influences of which ho had no experience till he came 
within the sphere of Christ's attraction, of which he 
cannot conceive as flowing from any other source, and 
through which he feels that he is brought into a vital 
union with Christ, corresponding to that of the branch 
with the parent-vine. The physiology, if I may so 
term it, of Christian regeneration is described with no 
little diversity of nomenclature ; but the phenomena 
of consciousness which attend it — the death to sin, 
the consecrated will, the affections set on things 
above, the fruits of the Divine Spiiit in the heart 



224 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

and life — are the same in those whose formal 
theories vary however widely ; and they are such 
phenomena as are not alleged to be produced by 
any other than Christian belief, culture, or influence. 

To the individual soul this consciousness of Chris- 
tian verities is, of course, the most convincing of all 
proofs, surpassing even objective intuition. What 
one feels he cannot but believe ; and when there has 
been for him a source from which he knows that he 
has derived peculiar inward experiences, it is impos- 
sible that he should not associate the source and the 
experiences as cause and effect. He, the better part 
of whose being and life has taken shape consciously 
through the instrumentality of the Gospel of Christ, 
so far as outward means are concerned, and, inwardly, 
through an influence upon the soul corresponding in 
all its characteristics to the influence which Jesus 
promised should rest upon his followers, cannot but 
believe in Christ and his Gospel with a positiveness 
and strength of conviction such as experience alone 
can produce. 

We now arrive at the question. What is the eviden- 
tial value of intuition to those outside of the Christian 
circle t Can the scientific or spiritual consciousness 
of one man be made availing to another, and, if so, 
how } I answer, first, that the attitude in which 
intuitive conviction places the Christian believer, 
inspires, extends, deepens such faith as falls short 
of intuition. When those who call themselves Chris- 
tians have a faith like Penelope's web, daily unravelled 
and rewoven, yielding to every show of cavil or scepti- 



i 



EVIDENTIAL WORTH OF INTUITION. 225 

cism, bending before every adverse blast, Christianity- 
receives ghastly wounds in the house of its professed 
friends, is tolerated rather than honored by those 
outside of its household, and, so far from making 
new converts, drops from time to time those who 
hang loosely on its skirts. Equally, when the faith 
that exists, though firm and unyielding, is traditional 
and not vital, when the Church clings to its belief with- 
out being penetrated by its spirit and its power, un- 
belief prevails. The epochs when infidelity has been 
most rampant have been those at which externality 
rather than inwardness has been the prevailing type of 
the religious life ; and, whenever that life has been so 
rekindled as to present the spectacle of intense and 
glowing vitality, unbelief has been arrested in its 
progress, and new confidence in Christian verities 
has taken possession of the collective mind of the 
community. Such faith — sincere, no doubt, of its 
kind, but dead-sure — as existed in the licentious 
court and the time-serving clergy of the age of Louis 
XIV., was among the chief causes of the French 
infidelity of the eighteenth century. The eminent 
champions of infidelity in England and Scotland, 
during the same century, were nurtured in the 
bosom of the easy-going Erastianism and luke- 
warmness of the national churches. Its tide was 
turned, not by the masterly and unanswerable de- 
fences of Christianity which it called forth, but by 
the infusion of spiritual life, alike into the establish- 
ments and the dissenting churches, under the auspi- 
ces of Whitefield, Wesley, and their coadjutors. Men 

10* 



226 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

ceased to doubt and cavil when they witnessed a faith 
which indicated a profound, active, and influential 
consciousness of its contents. 

Similar views would present themselves throughout 
Christendom, and in every period of its history. At 
the present moment, . you might go from place to 
place, and in each community, in and around every 
congregation, you would find that the amount and 
strength of belief on the part of those not within 
the circle of professed Christian experience bear a 
very close proportion to the inwardness and energy 
of the faith of Christian men and women : the 
quiescent, worldly, and formalistic church being 
surrounded by people who either avow their scep- 
ticism, or do not think the subject of sufficient im- 
portance for them to take any cognizance of it ; 
the living church, surrounded by those who give 
religion their assent, respect, and honor, and lie 
open to influences that may win them to sincere 
discipleship. This principle underlies all successful 
revivalism. Nothing can be done outside of the 
Church, till its inward life is renewed. The sole 
error of revivalism is that it seeks to make occasional 
and paroxysmal that which ought to be constant and 
perennial ; for did the light shine as it ought and 
might always in the heart of the Church, it would be 
seen all the time, and there would be no pause in the 
accession of those who, seeing it, would give glory to 
their Father in heaven. 

Nor is the conviction thus produced mere feeling. 
It has a logical basis. Intuition is a valid argument 



WORTH OF OBJECTIVE INTUITION: 227 

to those who have not attained to it. Even objective 
intuition is so. It is constantly admitted in other 
departments than reUgion. Of those wlio learn and 
impHcitly beheve the truths of science, of astronomy 
for instance, by far the greater number do not occupy 
a position in which they can have a clear scientific 
consciousness of them. Were these truths in the 
minds of their representative men mere hypotheses, 
they would be no more than hypotheses to other 
intelligent persons. But we take them on trust and 
believe them without a question, because we are as- 
sured by those who have given their lives to their 
investigation that they are so related to one another 
and to the phenomena of the universe, that they can- 
not but be true. Now it seems to me that we are 
similarly impressed by the clear vision of religious 
truth, which has been a characteristic of the greatest 
minds of these Christian ages. It is of no small 
worth to an intellect of feebler grasp that to such 
men as Milton, Newton, Boyle, Locke, Pascal, and a 
host beside that might be named, Christianity has 
seemed self-evident, shining in its own unborrowed 
light, incapable of being obscured by doubt or cavil. 
These men, indeed, beheved with the heart no less 
than with the intellect ; but their mere intellectual 
intuition is of itself an independent ground of argu- 
ment. They were men in whom feeling could not 
have preceded or produced belief, as in many lesser 
minds. The eyes of their understanding were wide 
open. They had before them the grounds of unbe- 
lief ; they could see round and through the objects of 



228 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

their faith ; and that their faith was clear as sight 
and impregnable to doubt, may well give reassurance 
to intellects of less keen and comprehensive vision. 

But, above all, subjective intuition furnishes vahd 
ground for belief. The Christian camp presents, 
indeed, not a homogeneous aspect, but unnumbered 
rival hosts, often turning their arms against one 
another rather than against the common enemy. Yet 
there are points of view from which their differences 
are merged, their enmities harmonized. There are 
certain traits which are common to the best men of 
all sects. The definition of the Christian spirit and 
life given by one would be accepted by all. The same 
manuals of practical piety are in the hands of all. 
The same Christian lyrics are sung with equal fervor 
in sanctuaries that stand over against each other like 
Zion and Gerizim. To the prayers of each all would 
add a hearty amen. Were they brought together, 
forbidden the use of technical phraseology, and in- 
duced to utter in the simplest language their several 
modes of consciousness as to what Christ had done 
for them, their duty to God, to Christ, to man, their 
abnegation of self-dependence, their trust in a divine 
redemption, their hope full of immortality, there would 
be no Babel-like confusion of tongues, as when they 
parade their distinctive dogmas, but a sweet concent 
and heavenly harmony. Now those who would thus 
with one heart and voice reveal a common conscious- 
ness are the foremost men in the esteem of their fel- 
low-men, the leaders in all good works, — those whose 
lives are confessedly pure, true, faithful, generous, 



WORTH OF SUBJECTIVE INTUITION. 229 

holy. Is there not in the united testimony of such 
men of all ages, nations, and sects, evidence of no 
mean worth to that which they all affirm ; namely, 
that Jesus Christ is the Sent of God, the Saviour 
of men, the Source of all excellence, the Inspirer 
of all virtue, the Way to the Father,- the incarnate 
Truth, the eternal Life made manifest ? 

As in thought I take my stand outside of the Church, 
of any church, I am profoundly moved by the una- 
nimity of this cloud of witnesses. Supposing myself 
not even in the humblest measure a partaker of their 
consciousness, I see evidently that it is in them not 
mere belief, but consciousness ; that they are in 
their inmost souls so identified with Christ that you 
cannot separate them from him, with his Gospel that 
you cannot wrest it from their hearts ; that to them, 
literally, ''to live is Christ." I must believe that 
which is so interwoven with their whole being a real- 
ity, even though it have not become a reality to me. 
I must give my assent, though I be not yet ready to 
give my consent. The elect spirits of my race cannot 
be the slaves of a puerile superstition. Falsity and 
delusion cannot bear the noblest fruits that have ever 
ripened on earthly ground. Their lives give to their 
testimony a confirmation which I cannot disallow. 
Their manifest consciousness must constrain my 
faith. The Gospel which they profess not to believe, 
but to know as the truth, has proved itself to and in 
them " the power of God unto salvation " from folly 
and sin ; and can I doubt that the salvation is divine 
and everlasting, as they believe it to be .'' 



230 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

We thus see that as to intuition science and Chris- 
tianity occupy the same ground, with this advantage 
on the side of Christianity, that the intuition is more 
intimate and vital, permeating the whole being, 
moulding the character, and manifesting its reahty 
and intensity in the life to which it gives aim, direc- 
tion, and end. How then, from the outer circle, can 
I accept the intuitions of scientific men, and reject 
those of Christian men ? Or if I can with my own 
inward vision gain some clear and self-evidencing 
views of scientific truth, and at the same time trust 
that I have some measure of insight, independent of 
and above external proof, into Christian verities, how 
can I yield credence, as I must, to the former, and yet 
suffer aught of incredulity or doubt to obscure the 
latter ? 

I have now completed the plan which I announced 
in my first Lecture. There is in our time no scepti- 
cism as to science, but only too willing assent to 
whatever purports or claims to be science, though 
only in the form of postulates or hypotheses. The 
established truths of science no one is so bold as to 
call in question. Scientific truth rests on the joint 
evidence of testimony, experiment, and intuition. I 
have shown you that Christianity has in its behalf 
testimony unequalled in its clearness, fulness, and 
validity ; experiment, in a vast diversity of forms, in 
numberless individual instances, and in the history of 
the civihzed world for these eighteen centuries ; and 
professed and manifest intuition, on the part of the 
greatest and best of our race through these same cen- 



RELATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 23 1 

turies, — I trust, ^Iso, in the minds of not a few who 
have listened to me, and have borne witness in their 
own consciousness to the divine worth and power of 
the everlasting Gospel, and of him who is the be- 
liever's hope. Science and Christianity rest on the 
same foundations. Let no one, then, suppose that he 
does honor to Christianity by jealousy of science. Let 
no one imagine that he serves science by discrediting 
Christianity. They are equally divine, equally from 
the inspiration of God, and each has essential minis- 
tries for the other. Science illustrates the very attri- 
butes of the Supreme Being which Christianity 
proclaims ; while Christianity prepares only the more 
generous receptivity for the truth which God has 
written on all things that he has made. May we not, 
then, join in the prayer of the great instaurator of the 
inductive philosophy } " This also we humbly and 
earnestly beg, — that human things may not prejudice 
such as are divine ; neither that from the unlocking 
of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater 
natural light, any thing may arise of incredulity or 
intellectual night towards divine mysteries ; but 
rather that by our minds thoroughly purged and 
cleansed from fancy and vanity, and yet subject and 
perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be 
given unto faith the things that are faith's." 



APPENDIX. 



I. 

THE apostles were, of necessity, the most authentic 
witnesses as to what Jesus was, said, and did. An 
express and formal analysis of their testimony would have 
been given in the foregoing Lectures, had not the author 
delivered and published a Lecture on this subject in the 
third course of Boston Lectures on Christianity and Scepti- 
cism. Leave has been obtained to reprint that Lecture in the 
present volume, as an essential part of the argument from 
testimony. It is reprinted without omission or alteration • 
for, though a small portion of it is parallel in thought, and 
one or two sentences nearly identical in language, with 
portions of the preceding volume, these passages could 
not have been omitted or changed without mutilating the 
argument of which they form a part. 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 

"D ENAN'S Life of Jesus, which before the Franco- 
-■-^ Prussian war had reached in the original its 
thirteenth edition, besides not a few in its Enghsh 
dress, is now the gospel of the doubting and unbe- 
lieving on both sides of the Atlantic, and will remain 
so till some one bolder or more subtle than he shall 
displace him, as he displaced Strauss. His book is 
a charming one in its delineations of everybody and 
everything but Christ. In his chapter on the orig- 
inal disciples, he gives a very vivid sketch of their 
respective individualities ; and both in his " Life of 
Jesus " and in his work on the Apostles, he acknowl- 
edges the authenticity of the accounts we have of them, 
the miraculous narratives alone excepted. There is in 
the Introduction to his " Life of Jesus," one very ex- 
traordinary testimony to the truth of the evangelic 
history, which I cannot forbear quoting. 

" I have traversed in every direction the district 
where the scenes of the Gospel are laid. I have vis- 
ited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Samaria. Almost no 
site named in the story of Jesus has escaped me. 
All this narrative, which at a distance seems to float 
in the clouds of an unreal world, thus assumed a 
body, a substantial existence, which astonished me. 



SACRIFICES OF THE APOSTLES. 235 

The striking coincidence of texts and places, the 
wonderful harmony of the ideal of the Gospels with 
the country which served as its frame, was for me a 
revelation. I had before my eyes a fifth Gospel, and 
thenceforth through the stories of Matthew and Mark, 
instead of an abstract being who one might say had 
never existed, I saw in life and movement a human 
form that challenged admiration." 

In fine, Renan treats the entire New-Testament 
history as an unquestionable record of actual histori- 
cal personages and events, except where the super- 
natural element crops out in the narrative ; thus far, 
at least, showing himself both a clear-sighted and an 
honest critic. In point of fact, the historical books 
of the New Testament have at once so many external 
proofs and internal tokens of their authenticity, as to 
leave no question concerning the substantial truth of 
their narrative of ordinary events, however we may 
dispose of the abnormal incidents they record. 

Resting, then, on the admitted authenticity of this 
narrative, I propose to draw from the apostles who 
bear in it so prominent a part such testimony as they 
offer in behalf of their Lord and Master. 

In the first place, there is not the slightest doubt 
that of eleven of these apostles, most or all incurred 
hardships, losses, perils, persecutions, and sufferings 
of the severest character, in attestation of their belief 
in the Divine mission and authority of Jesus ; that 
several of them, as itinerant preachers, devoted them- 
selves for the residue of their lives to the promul- 
gation of this belief, their zeal carrying them into 



236 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

distant lands, and enabling them to overcome natural, 
social, and national barriers, insurmountable except 
to the most ardent and self-forgetting enthusiasm ; 
and that several of them, in the same cause, encoun- 
tered and bravely endured beheading, crucifixion, 
and other agonizing and ignominious forms of death. 
These things attest, at least, the sincerity and the 
intensity of their belief. Sacrifice and martyrdom 
always prove as much as this. But they do not prove 
the truth of a belief, — if they did, there would be no 
end to the shams, contradictions, and absurdities, 
which, as sealed by the blood of their believers, we 
should be compelled to recognize as true. 

There is, however, this peculiarity which distin- 
guishes the apostles from all other martyrs, even 
from other early Christian martyrs. The declara- 
tions which they maintained at the peril and cost of 
their lives were not dogmatic articles of faith, but 
statements of alleged facts, of which they professed 
to have been eye and ear witnesses. Foremost 
among these facts was the resurrection of Jesus from 
the dead. That they believed themselves witnesses 
of the reality of his death and of his reappearance 
among the living, there cannot be the slightest doubt. 
This Renan admits. He maintains that Jesus really 
died ; that the apostles caught eagerly at the first 
rumor of his resurrection, which grew from the steal- 
ing of his body (it is hard to say by whom, but more 
probably by Joseph of Arimathea than by any one 
else) , and from Mary Magdalene's mistaking the gar- 
dener for him in the dim dawn and through the mist 



GENUINENESS OF THE GOSPELS. 237 

of her tears ; thatjthey so firmly believed this story 
as to imagine that they saw him repeatedly, by day 
as well as by night, at Jerusalem and in Galilee, the 
whole eleven of them at a time ; and that this hallu- 
cination lasted many days, and, on one occasion, 
extended to the more than five hundred brethren 
mentioned by St. Paul. He says emphatically that 
had the apostles possessed less than the strongest 
assurance of their Master's resurrection, they could 
not by any possibility have been the earnest propa- 
gandists and heroic sufferers that they undoubtedly 
were. We thank him for this admission ; and indeed 
no champion of the Christian faith can ask for a 
firmer basis for his superstructure of argument and 
evidence than the concessions made all along by this 
pre-eminently fair and frank, yet for all this only the 
more captivating and dangerous, Corypheus of the 
anti-Christian host. 

But the undoubting belief of professed eye and 
ear witnesses is not in itself sufficient to inspire con- 
fidence in their story. If these men were fools or 
fanatics, their testimony, though blood-sealed, is of 
no value. The question for us then is, whether they 
were persons of sufficiently acute perceptions, clear 
mind, and sound judgment, to be relied on. 

To answer this question, let us look first at their 
writings. Five of them, Matthew, John, James, 
Peter, and Jude, are among the reputed authors of 
the New Testament. As to these writers, we have 
as good reason for believing in the genuineness of 
Matthew's and John's Gospels, of John's First Epis- 



238 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

tie, and of Peter's First Epistle, as we have for 
believing in the genuineness of Virgil's Georgics, 
or of Cicero de Officiis. We find them, from the ear- 
liest mention made of them, named and quoted as 
written by their now reputed authors, without any 
record or intimation of a doubt or question as to their 
authorship. 

I am aware, indeed, that rationalistic criticism does 
not admit that the Gospels came into being as other 
books do. The development theory is applied to 
them, as to the whole realm of living nature. Their 
genesis is like Topsy's, in Mrs. Stowe's tale, — "I 
'spect I grow'd, don't think nobody never made me." 
But Renan admits that memoranda of our Saviour's 
discourses written out by Matthew were the nucleus 
of the Gospel which bears his name. He thinks, too, 
that the narrative portions of John's Gospel, which he 
regards as singularly truthlike and accurate, were 
derived from that apostle, and that the whole book 
was written by his immediate disciples. 

Here let me offer some considerations with special 
reference to the authorship of the fourth Gospel. 
As I have said, the testimony of antiquity that it 
was written by John is unanimous and full. As to 
his having written the Apocalypse, that testimony is 
less clear and conclusive. Yet the critics of the 
Tubingen school maintain that this last book was 
undoubtedly written by the Apostle John. But it is 
very certain that the same man wrote the Gospel of 
John (so-called), the first Epistle bearing his name, 
and the Apocalypse ; for there are several very strik- 



GENUINENESS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 239 

ing characteristic conceptions and figures, which are 
both pecuhar and common to these three writings, or 
to the Gospel and the Apocalypse. For instance, the 
term Logos (the Word) is applied to Jesus in all 
three of them, and nowhere else ; and again, Jesus is 
introduced in the Gospel under the figure of a lamb ; 
the same figure reappears in the Apocalypse, in 
almost every vision of the glorified Redeemer, and 
he is called by this name nowhere else. These are 
but two instances, to which several others might be 
added, of peculiarities common to the Gospel and the 
Apocalypse, and rendering it very certain that, if the 
Tubingen critics do not err in ascribing the latter to 
John, he must have written the former. 

Yet another consideration strikes me very forcibly 
in favor of the authorship of the fourth Gospel by 
John. True or false, this is the most remarkable 
book ever written, and has had more power over the 
human mind and heart than any other, both in 
determining belief, and in awakening tender, pro- 
found, and fervent devotion. The sublimest narrative 
ever written is that of the raising of Lazarus. The 
words put into the mouth of Jesus in that scene, " I 
am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in 
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and who- 
soever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die," 
are the grandest utterance ever heard on earth, and 
must and will be rehearsed in hope and triumph, by 
the grave-side, till the last of the dying shall have 
put on immortality. The recorded communings and 
intercessions of the night of the betrayal surpass in 



240 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

every element of pathos all human literature beside, 
and there are at this and at every moment, all the 
world over, thousands upon thousands of the weary 
and grief-stricken, who, oft as they read these blessed 
words, feel pillowed on the bosom of Infinite Love. 

Now, there are but two hypotheses possible. One 
is, that we have the faithful narrative of what was 
said and done by the Truth and Life incarnate, trans- 
mitted to us by the hand of one who saw and heard 
what he wrote. If this be so, while it makes no 
manner of difference which of the apostles wrote the 
book, no one would venture to doubt its having been 
written by John. The other supposition is, that the 
author of this Gospel, by his own genius, without a 
copy, shaped and filled out in those transcendently 
glorious and beautiful proportions and tints the figure 
of Jesus Christ, and from his own fertile brain, spun 
those discourses into whose depth none can enter 
without seeming to listen to the very voice of God. 
If this be true, then the author of that book deserves 
the place in human gratitude, reverence, nay, adora- 
tion, which the Christian Church has assigned to 
Jesus. He towers up above all other writers, all 
other men of his age ; nay, more, as the greatest 
mind, the greatest soul of his race. The book is, 
indeed, superhuman, if he whom it portrays was not 
so. How then could the name of such a writer have 
been lost, and his fame transferred to another } It 
was a name too great to perish, a fame too exalted 
not to have its enduring record. We are then com- 
pelled to accept as our only alternative, our first sup- 



i 



THE APOSTLES CREDIBLE WRITERS. 24I 

position, — the belief resting on unbroken tradition 
from the earliest times, that this book, great and 
glorious as it is, was written by an illiterate Galilean 
fisherman, and that it owes its superiority to all other 
books, not to any surpassing ability of the author, 
but to the Divine life in human form, as to which 
he only related what had been uttered in his presence, 
or done under his personal knowledge. 

As for the Epistle bearing the name of James, we 
have evidence that it was generally received as gen- 
uine, and was from a very early period read in the 
churches. As of the two apostles bearing that name, 
the brother of John died early, this letter must be 
ascribed to James, the son of Alphaeus. We have 
about the same kind and nearly the same degree of 
evidence, for the genuineness of the epistle called 
that of Jude, or Judas, — evidence which would be 
deemed amply sufficient for any book outside of the 
sacred canon. The epistles of James and Jude have 
also characteristics of style and sentiment which ally 
them to the undoubtedly genuine epistles of John 
and Peter, and show that they belong to the earliest 
time and the apostolic school, and not to the next 
succeeding Christian age, whose few extant writings 
are of quite a different type. 

We have then, undoubtedly, in our hands the 
writings of some of those men, who, at the risk of 
every thing earthly, professed to have been eye-wit- 
nesses of what Jesus said and did. How do they 
write } Like intelligent, sober, credible men } Or 
do they in their writings show themselves so stupid 



242 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

and foolish, or so wild and fanatical, that they could 
easily have been the dupes of pretension or impost- 
ure? This question would seem to be answered by 
the regard which has been paid to their writings in 
every subsequent age by the foremost men in point 
of intelligence, good sense, and culture. These 
writers have generally been supposed, in Christen- 
dom, to have been specially enlightened and inspired 
by God. Whether this be so or not, it is aside from 
our present purpose to inquire ; but the fact that such 
an opinion concerning them has been held by a large 
proportion of the first minds of our race is a suffi- 
cient proof that their writings are at least free from 
the tokens of weakness, folly, or infatuation. 

This view of their character is certainly confirmed 
on examination. The books present all the marks 
of truth, when tried by the usual tests. The Gospels 
of Matthew and John contain a great many names, 
dates, local and historical references ; it was a period 
of very frequent change in the political relations of 
Palestine, — a period as to which later writers would 
inevitably have committed gross anachronisms ; yet 
we find in these books only the closest accordance, 
in geography, chronology, and history, with all the 
authorities of the time, especially with the minute 
and circumstantial history of Josephus. Then, too, 
we have between the Epistles and the Gospels, just 
the kind of coincidences which we should expect to 
trace in genuine works. Thus we find in the Epistles 
not any formal statement of facts, or set rehearsal 
of the words of Jesus ; but we detect in them unmis- 



THE EPISTLE OF JAMES. 243 

takable tokens of firm belief in the contents of the 
Gospels, and what is more, of precisely the condition 
of mind and character which these contents were 
adapted to produce. The coincidences between the 
Epistles and the Gospels are closely analogous to 
those which we should expect to find between the 
domestic or friendly letters of statesmen or generals 
concerned in either war of our independence and 
authentic histories of the same war. 

Then, again, there are no books in the world that 
show greater serenity and clearness of mind than 
these manifest. Their style is simple, artless, free 
from exaggeration, hyperbole, apostrophe, declama- 
tion, ambitious rhetoric, outbursts of impetuous feel- 
ing. Matthew and John, in describing the marvellous 
life and works of Jesus Christ, write as quietly and 
dispassionately as if they were narrating ordinary 
events. They show no fear that they shall not be 
believed. They use no forms of strong asseveration. 
In fine, they write as if they had become so accus- 
tomed to experiences on a higher plane than that of 
common humanity, as to be unconscious of their 
position, — just as natives of Switzerland might talk 
and write calmly and unexcitedly about glaciers, and 
avalanches, and scenes of which the mere thought 
thrills us with profound emotion. 

The Epistle of James is a very remarkable compo- 
sition. Had it come down to us, with such slight 
verbal changes as might have been necessary, as a 
treatise of Plutarch, or Epictetus, or Marcus Anto- 
ninus, it would now be regarded as the finest ethical 



244 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

monument of antiquity, and would hold an unrivalled 
place as a school and college classic. For common 
sense, shrewd observation of men and things, deep 
insight, and practical wisdom of the highest order, it 
may resign all vantage-ground on the score of any 
sacred associations, and still retain its prestige unim- 
paired ; while it is no less remarkable for the sharp 
edge and keen point and brilliant sheen of many of 
its single maxims and apophthegms. 

I have said enough about these writings for my 
present argument, — enough to show you that at 
least those of the apostles whom we know as authors 
were not feeble, silly, credulous men, who could have 
been easily deceived by an impostor, or drawn by a 
self-deluded pretender into the vortex of his fanati- 
cism ; but that they were clear-headed, sober-minded, 
intelligent, and in every way competent witnesses of 
the events which some of them record as from their 
own personal knowledge, and the others recognize as 
undoubted facts. 

Let us now take note of the professions of the 
apostles, so far as they are specified in the New Tes- 
tament. Six of them, perhaps more, were fishermen 
on the little lake of Galilee, — not sailors in any large 
sense of the word (for they were probably never out 
of sight of land, or in their boats for more than a day 
at a time), so that there was nothing in their simple, 
prosaic life to nurture the imaginative element, or to 
cherish credulity and superstition, but much that was 
adapted to educate their perceptive faculties, their 



CHARACTER OF PETER. 245 

powers of observation, and their plain, practical com- 
mon sense. HarHy, straightforward, honest men, 
jostled and jostling on the rough paths of daily life, 
the weaker sinews of character broken down, the 
hardier developed by incessant toil, they would have 
been firm adherents to one who could give them 
unmistakable credentials of his claims, but not such 
persons as could be enlisted in the cause of a fanatic, 
or become the easy dupes of a plausible deceiver. 
We have in the first chapter of John's Gospel, in a 
series of conversations whose life-likeness Renan (in 
an Appendix to his last edition) adduces as a token 
of their authenticity, a very vivid picture of what these 
men were before they became the disciples of Jesus ; 
and the picture is that of self-respecting, intelligent, 
thoughtful men, — such men as the Hebrew theology 
and the institutions of Moses were adapted to pro- 
duce among the laboring classes, but such as were 
developed under no other type of ancient civilization, 
nor have yet been formed, except in comparatively 
small numbers, under the half-Pagan auspices of what 
I fear we miscall Christian civilization. 

Of these fishermen, one indeed, Peter, appears to 
have been ardent and impulsive in his nature. But 
it is equally manifest that he was testy, petulant, 
captious, easily offended, and ready sometimes even 
to find fault with his Master. Such a man as he 
would have been disgusted with sham and pretension. 
Had there been aught in the works, words, or daily 
life of Jesus that was not genuine, honest, pure, noble, 
he was the very man to take umbrage at it, and to 



246 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

transmute his allegiance into implacable enmity. 
But his attachment flickers only for a few moments 
under the natural reaction from a foolhardy courage ; 
a single look from his Master drowns his denial in a 
passion of tears ; and thenceforward none is more 
prompt and earnest than he to bear testimony, at 
whatever cost and risk, to the power and love of God 
as incarnate in Jesus Christ. 

Another of the twelve, Matthew, was a tax-gatherer 
in the service of the Roman government, probably a 
collector of the imposts on the brisk though petty 
inland traffic on the Lake of Galilee, — gathering 
tribute from a people that scorned to pay it, and 
sought every possible subterfuge to evade it. His 
office could have been borne only by one who was all 
eye and ear. He was a detective by the necessity of 
his profession, — the last man to be duped either by 
fanaticism or by imposture. He, too, had more to lose 
than the fishermen. The hands of all the fiscal agents 
of Rome, great and small, had viscous palms ; and we 
have intimation of his substantial worldly estate in his 
making a great feast for the Saviour, — an occasion 
important enough for the Pharisees to know who the 
guests were, and to carp at them as below the stand- 
ard of Jewish gentility and purism. His testimony, 
then, has a peculiar value, both on the ground of his 
profession, and on account of the heavy sacrifice 
which his discipleship made inevitably necessary. 
As for his Gospel, its entire character accords closely 
with what we know of him. There is something 
journal-like in its narrative portions, as if it were 



SIMON ZELOTES. 247 

written by a man of business. It contains more 
about the Saviour^ sayings and doings at Caper- 
naum — Matthew's post of duty — than either of the 
other Gospels. Moreover, when he speaks of his 
own house, he calls it the house, as a man generally 
does when he has a place of business separate from 
his home. The uniform tradition of the early Church 
represents his sacrifice for the cause of Christ as life- 
long, his service as a missionary of the cross having 
been first, for fifteen years, in Judaea, and afterward 
in remote regions of the East, and perhaps of the 
South ; for there is some reason to beheve that his 
Christian enterprise carried him as far as Ethiopia. 

Another of the sacred college was Simon, the 
Canaanite, as he is called by Matthew and Mark, 
Zclotes (or the Zealot), as Luke styles him, — the 
former being the Syro-Chaldaic, the latter the Greek 
designation of a sect of Jewish fanatics, who pushed 
their loyalty to th^ Mosaic ritual and economy to 
absolute frenzy, regarded the Roman power with the 
intensest hatred, deemed murder and even stealthy 
assassination justifiable in defence of the national 
integrity and faith, and were the foremost agents in 
producing the condition of things which led to the 
destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Hebrew 
people, — enormities opposed to the ordinary and else 
invariable Roman policy, but forced upon Titus by 
the unparalleled obstinacy of these very ultraists of 
whom we so strangely find one among the followers 
of Jesus Christ. The Zealots were literal interpreters 



248 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

of the prophecies that seemed to promise extended 
temporal dominion to the Messiah, and were in con- 
stant expectation of his advent. We know nothing 
very definite about this man's subsequent Hfe ; but 
the tradition is, that he was an indefatigable propa- 
gandist of the new faith, and that he finally suffered 
death on the cross. 

That a man of this sort should have been among 
the apostles indicates, as it seems to me, the reality 
of the coincidence, claimed by the Evangelists, be- 
tween the Messiah of the prophets and Jesus of 
Nazareth. This man was one of those who were all 
the time watching the Eastern sky for the dawn of 
the Messianic day, and that a day, as they imagined, 
of vengeance and of victory. There was not a pro- 
phetic sign with which he was not familiar ; but only 
a convergence of these signs, too patent and too full 
to admit of doubt, could have made a Zealot acknowl- 
edge a Messiah in every feature so utterly unlike the 
mailed and harnessed chieftain of his day-dreams. 

This is a point which seems to me deserving of 
more than a passing notice. The evangelists relate 
numerous circumstances of birthplace, birth, parent- 
age, condition, and experience, in which prophecy 
concerning the Messiah was said to be fulfilled in 
Jesus. Rationalistic critics represent these coinci- 
dences as in part factitious, and in part fictitious. 
They allege that Jesus did some things, in order to 
simulate the Messiah of the prophets ; and that, as 
to the greater number of those particulars in which 
he could have had no agency, as about his birth in 



THE SCEPTICISM OF THOMAS. 249 

Bethlehem and his descent from David, the evangehsts 
coined facts in accordance with predictions. It might 
seem sufficient to say that, as the coiners of these 
coincidences risked their Hves by coining them, they 
must, before undertaking thus to deceive the world, 
have accomplished the more difficult task of deceiv- 
ing themselves. But here we have a specially strong 
case. A man pledged at once to the most literal 
interpretation of prophecy and to a line of conduct 
utterly opposed to the spirit and character of Jesus 
is so impressed with the Messianic tokens that meet 
in Jesus, as to throw aside his old sectarian convic- 
tions, to renounce his former self, to become a new 
man, and to adhere in Hfe and death to a Teacher 
and Leader with whom at the outset he could have 
had nothing in common except reverence for the Word 
of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. 

We come next to the case of Thomas. He was 
evidently sceptical by nature, — I would even say, by 
the grace and gift of God, who evidently made use 
of this trait in his mental character for the strength- 
ening of his own faith, and of that of multitudes who 
should come after him. The other ten have seen the 
risen Lord, and have no doubt of his identity. He 
very naturally thinks it more probable that they have 
been deceived by some family likeness or casual re- 
semblance in another person than that the Crucified 
is really alive. He demands to examine the wound- 
marks, to trace the prints of the nails, the incision 
made by the spear. He was in the right. His was 

n* 



250 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

an honest and reasonable doubt, and we are thankful 
for it. His name should never be spoken with less 
than the highest honor, and had he been the type of 
a larger proportion of those ministers of religion who 
have been successors of the apostles, there would be 
much less of infidelity than there now is. Credulity 
generates unbelief ; and infidelity has no weapons of 
its own forging that have half the efficacy of those 
which it picks up among the crazy outworks, built by 
a faith both blind and timid, around the impregnable 
citadel of everlasting truth. 

There are two kinds of scepticism, — that of the 
heart and that of the intellect. The former is adapted 
to make unbelievers ; the latter, to make Christians. 
The former will not look at the hands and the side, 
because it is determined not to be moved morally and 
spiritually as they would move the honest soul ; the 
latter insists on seeing the wound-marks, because it 
wants to know the precise truth, and therefore avails 
itself of whatever evidence God has given. The 
scepticism of the heart hates the light, and will not 
come to the light, lest its deeds be reproved. The 
scepticism of the mind is that which cannot believe 
without sufficient evidence. It proves all things, and 
holds fast that which will stand the test. It examines 
both sides of a question, and adheres to that which 
imposes the least strain on its belief. Such a mind 
needs only to have the evidences of Christianity fairly 
presented, to yield to it entire and cordial faith. Many 
of the firmest believers, many of the ablest defenders 
of the truth as it is in Jesus, belong to this class of 



HONEST SCEPTICISM. 25 1 

minds. In this sense, Lardner, Paley, and Butler, 
whose contributions to the Christian evidences are 
invakiable, and will be so for generations to come, 
were pre-eminently sceptics. They would not believe, 
without examining the hands and the side, trying all 
the witnesses, testing the objections against Chris- 
tianity with the opposing arguments, weighing coolly 
and impartially the evidence, real or pretended, on 
either side ; and the result was a faith in Christ, 
which sight could hardly have rendered clearer or 
stronger. 

God has made many such minds, and they are 
among the noblest and best of his creation. I have 
known, you probably have, some extreme specimens 
of this kind among the most loyal and exemplary 
Christians. Take a case like this, — I paint from 
life, an individual as the type of a class. He whom 
I describe wants for every item of his belief a solid 
basis of fact, and a superstructure of unanswerable 
reasoning built upon it ; and he will let his faith 
reach no higher than he can lay this superstructure, 
as it were, stone upon stone in insoluble cement. 
He has no relish (and I think him wrong there) 
for those speculations about spiritual and heavenly 
things, in which, from a mere hint of holy writ, fancy 
takes her flight in those higher regions of thought, 
which, I believe, God has purposely left undescribed, 
that we may have our free range in them. In the 
house built on Christ as the foundation, he prefers to 
live in the lower story, where he can test the strength 
of the floor and the walls. But so firmly has he by 



252 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

careful examination convinced himself of the Saviour's 
redeeming mission, sacrificial death, miracles, resur- 
rection and ascension, that he speaks of them as he 
would of sunrise, or the phases of the moon, or any 
of the well-known phenomena of the outward world, 
as matters long since placed by him beyond question. 
He conforms his life to these great spiritual facts, as 
he does to the laws of nature. And when he comes 
to die, he passes away, not with any glow of ecstasy, 
but with the quiet confidence of one who knows just 
where he is going, and has just as firm a belief in 
the many mansions in the Father's house as in the 
several apartments in his own house. This is the 
style of faith that grows from the honest scepticism 
which insists on always having sufficient reasons for 
its belief. It often has less unction than might seem 
edifying ; but if you want valiant soldiers of the cross 
for times when unbelief is rampant, boastful, and 
aggressive, these are the men to bear the shock of 
arms, and come off more than conquerors. 

We care not, then, how many there are of the 
same order of mind with Thomas. The condition of 
the Christian evidences is specially adapted to their 
natures. The infidel has much harder things to 
believe than the Christian, severer difficulties to 
encounter, contradictions, inconsistencies and absurd- 
ities which only a credulous mind could entertain, 
— from which a natively sceptical intellect is inev- 
itably drawn into the Christian faith. For, if Chris- 
tianity be not true, we have to believe in numerous 
well-known effects without any adequate cause ; in 



TESTIMONY TO CHRIST'S PRIVA TE CHAR A CTER. 253 

extensive conditions of mind and of conviction for 
which there wasTio^ basis whatever ; in the growing 
up of confessedly the most perfect system of moraUty 
the world has ever seen, in the brain of an illiterate 
Galilean peasant, in a degenerate nation and a corrupt 
age, and not only so, but in the brain of one who was 
either weak enough to imagine, or wicked enough 
to feign, himself possessed of supernatural powers ; 
in the simultaneous illusion of the senses of multi- 
tudes and bodies of men for many successive days, 
when it was the interest and the wish of those very 
men to find that false which they were constrained 
to recognize as true ; in the imposition of pretended 
or imagined miracles upon a hostile people, so suc- 
cessfully that they were compelled to admit their 
actual occurrence, and (as we have abundant Jewish 
evidence) imputed them to the aid of Beelzebub, the 
imagined prince of demons ; and in many other things 
equally incredible and opposed to all recognized laws 
of belief. The fact is, that not a few of the most 
noted infidels of modern times have been equally 
noted for their credulity ; and that at the present 
moment the superstitions hardly less gross than feti- 
chism, which are connected with pseudo-spiritualism, 
are most rife in the very quarters where the miracles 
and the resurrection of Jesus are thrown aside as 
unworthy of credence. 

One word more about the eleven, before I pass to 
the twelfth. These eleven, it must be remembered, 
were not only witnesses of leading events in the life 



254 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

of Jesus, but were for many months his constant 
companions, on the road, in the house, on the lake. 
They knew his whole manner of life, — his modes of 
intercourse with all sorts and conditions of men, — 
the degree to which he embodied his precepts of 
piety, purity, justice, forbearance, and kindness in 
his daily walk and conversation. They staked their 
lives on a body of statements, prominent among 
which was the alleged fact of his faultless and abso- 
lutely godlike sanctity and excellence. They must 
have known whether this was true or not ; and that 
they suffered and died to attest it, proves that they 
knew it to be true. 

I have spoken of eleven only. There remains 
Judas, by far the most important of all, for whom 
the Church has been slow to own her debt of ever- 
lasting gratitude to the God who makes the wrath 
and guilt of man to praise him. Judas had the same 
opportunities with the other eleven for knowing 
every thing about his Master that could be known. 
He was employed in a confidential relation, as cus- 
todian of the scanty funds of the apostolic family. 
He was probably from the first a selfish, greedy, 
deceitful man ; our Saviour early and repeatedly in- 
timates his recognition of these traits ; and he prob- 
ably chose him on account of them, that, if malice 
itself could find aught against him, it might have 
free scope and full swing. 

Judas entered into negotiations with the chief 
priests and their associates for the ruin of his Mas- 



TESTIMONY OF JUDAS. 255 

ter, and, mercenary as he was, he would certainly 
have effected thaT'ruin in the way most profitable to 
himself. Now it was only as a last resort that the 
leading Jews wanted to get possession of the body 
of Jesus. They felt by no means certain that they 
could persuade Pilate to kill him, and they dared not 
kill him themselves. They would have immeasurably 
preferred to destroy his influence, to detect some im- 
posture in his alleged miracles, or to find some weak 
point in his character, some damning incident in his 
life. They were so doubtful how they could dispose 
of their prisoner, that they offered a very low price 
for him. But they had large means at their com- 
mand, and would have given a much greater reward 
for a surer service. Could Judas have gone to those 
men with evidence of jugglery, pretence, or exagger- 
ation in the wonderful works reported to have been 
wrought by Jesus, or could he have proved a single 
deed or utterance that would impair the reputation 
of perfect sanctity which Jesus held among a large 
portion of the people ; in fine, could he have borne 
the slightest testimony against his Master's character, 
he might as easily as not have made his thirty pieces 
of silver three thousand, — he might have named his 
own price, and if there had not been money enough 
in hand, they would have taken up contributions in 
all the synagogues to pay it. But there was abso- 
lutely nothing secret which could injure Jesus and 
his cause by being made known. There was nothing 
for this bad mian to betray except the place in the 
environs of the crowded city where Jesus was going 



256 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

to pass the night, — it being necessary to arrest him 
by night on account of the large number of friendly 
Galileans who would have resisted any attempt to 
apprehend him by daylight. For this mean and 
paltry service he had a commensurately pitiful com- 
pensation. 

But even he repents of what he has done. The 
power and beauty of that blessed spirit, the majesty, 
meekness, and love of that holy countenance come 
over him, but too late to recall his deed. He seeks, 
as so many do in all times, in our time, to escape 
the contamination of ill-gotten gain by casting it into 
the temple treasury ; and finding no relief, in an agony 
of remorse and despair he goes and hangs himself, 
bearing as unequivocal and precious testimony to the 
truth and purity of his Master in that horrible suicide, 
as the other apostles bore in their cheerful suffer- 
ings and martyrdom for the love of their ascended 
Lord. 

Judas has been strangely overlooked by the Church ; 
no day is assigned to him in the calendar ; no account 
is taken of his services ; — yet we could have better 
spared a better man. We thank God for the life- 
record of those of the sacred college who followed 
closest in the footsteps of their Lord ; yet while we 
have the Master, we might not have missed even 
James, or Peter, or Nathaniel. But we do need 
Judas, to learn what aspect the Saviour manifested 
to a subtle, captious, and treacherous witness, and 
thus to have the testimony of the vilest avarice, 
meanness, and malice, alongside with that of God 



THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. 257 

and the holy angels, to the truth of his claims, the 
guilelessness of his spirit, the purity of his life. 

I have thus presented the evidences of our Saviour's 
Divine mission and character afforded us by those of 
whom the Evangelist writes, " He ordained twelve, 
that they should be with him." In transmitting to 
us their testimony, he has ordained us also, that we 
should be with him. This is the place to which Jesus 
calls us and heaven invites us. Be it our place ; and 
may it be our blessedness so to confess him in our 
earthly lives and before men, that we may be owned 
of him in heaven, before the angels of God. 



II. 

NOTES. 



Note A. — Page 22. 

" [Herod's] wife having discovered the agreement he had 
made with Herodias, and having learned it before he 
had notice of her knowledge of the whole design, she 
desired him. to send her to Macherus, which was subject 
to her father, and so all things necessary to her journey 
were made ready for her by the general of Aretas's army ; 
and by that means she soon came into Arabia, under the 
conduct of several generals, who carried her from one to 
another till she reached her father, and told him of Herod's 
intentions. Aretas made this the occasion of hostilit}' 
against Herod, who had also some quarrel with him about 
their limits in the territory of Gamalitis. So they raised 
armies on both sides, prepared for war, and sent their 
generals to fight instead of themselves ; and when they 
had joined battle, all Herod's army was destroyed by the 
treachery of certain fugitives, who, though they were of the 
tetrarchy of Philip, had joined Herod's army." — Josephus, 
jfewish Antiquities^ xviii. 5. i. 

Note B. — Page 32. 

Several of Justin's alleged additions to the narrative of 
the canonical Gospels were probably only his own amplifi- 



JUSTIN'S ACCOUNT OF CHRIST. 259 

cation or exposition of that narrative. Thus, when he 
quotes the Jews as saying of the miracles of Christ " that 
they were a magical delusion," he but expresses in different 
words the charge, " He is casting out demons by Beelzebub, 
the prince of demons." Thus also, when he says, that 
" Christ, being regarded as a worker in wood, made, while 
among men, ploughs and yokes," he is simply drawing a 
natural inference from Christ's being called a carpenter in 
Mark's Gospel. 

In describing the birth of Christ, he says, that " as 
Joseph could find no room in any inn at Bethlehem, he 
lodged in a cave near the village, and while they were 
there, Mary brought forth the Messiah, and laid him in a 
stall." This is not by any means inconsistent with the 
narrative of St. Luke, nor with probability. The (so- 
called) Cave of the Nativity was shown at a very early 
period, and the frequent use of caves as stables in the East 
is attested by modern travellers, as well as by several pas- 
sages that might be cited from ancient writers. Such 
knowledge of the local fact or tradition concerning the 
cave needs no written authority to account for it, as Justin 
was not a stranger in Palestine. 

In his account of the baptism of Jesus, Justin varies 
from the Gospels, as we read them, in two particulars. 
One is the statement that " when Jesus came to the river 
Jordan where John was baptizing, upon his entering the 
water, a fire was kindled in the Jordan." This must have 
been a very early tradition ; for, though there is no reason 
to believe that it was put on record by the author of the 
first Gospel, it is found in the oldest extant manuscript 
of the earliest Latin version of that Gospel (Matt. iii. 
15), and in one or more other old Latin manuscripts, 
having been, no doubt, first written in the margin of some 



26o CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Greek copy, and rendered by the translator as a part of 
the text. It is, however, manifest that Justin derived it 
from unwritten tradition ; for he adds : " The apostles 
of this same person, our Messiah, have written that when 
he came out of the water, the Holy Spirit, like a dove, 
alighted upon him." The other deviation from the narra- 
tive of the Gospels concerns the voice from heaven at the 
baptism, which Justin twice quotes as having uttered the 
words, " Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." 
These words may have been in Justin's copy of St. Luke's 
Gospel ; for they are found (Luke iii. 22) in the Cam- 
bridge Manuscript of the Greek text, — one of the oldest 
authorities, — and (translated) in several of the earliest 
Latin manuscripts extant. 

Justin, while he quotes very largely from our Saviour's 
own words, quotes as his but one saying, not found in the 
Gospels, namely, " In whatever actions I apprehend you, 
by those will I judge you." This may have originated 
from a lapse of memory in quoting some one of the not 
unlike recorded sayings of Jesus, or it may have been one 
of the many utterances which were repeated as his among 
his disciples without being recorded by his biographers. 

It is certain that Justin had in his hands the fourth and 
latest Gospel ; for he quotes as a saying of Christ, " Unless 
ye be born again, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of 
heaven," — a text in which the common editions of the 
New Testament read " the kingdom of God," but which in 
the Sinaitic manuscript — the oldest and highest author- 
ity — (and according to several other early authorities), is 
written " the kingdom of heaven." (See Norton's " Evi- 
dences of the Genuineness of the Gospels," Part I. chap, ii., 
and Tischendorff's "Origin of the Four Gospels.") 



EUSEBIUS ON PAPIAS. 261 



Note C. — Page t^2>- 

Justin's writings ajfford conclusive proof that what are 
commonly called the " Apocryphal Gospels," if already 
written in his time, had no authority among intelligent 
Christians. Had he possessed them, and regarded them 
as authentic, it is impossible that, with his full and minute 
citations of Christ's words and deeds, he should not have 
quoted from them. There is, indeed, no trace of their 
existence during the first three centuries, and in the fourth 
century they are expressly referred to as late compositions, 
by unknown jDcrsons, and of no historical value. They 
are not in a single instance quoted with approval within 
the period in which their sanction by a Christian writer 
could have any bearing on the question of their authen- 
ticity or early antiquity. They are, however, of great 
worth, as showing what kinds of traditions must have 
found ready circulation among the more ignorant Chris- 
tians, and thus by their contrast with our canonical Gos- 
pels enhancing the presumption in favor of the latter as 
authentic. The Apocryphal Gospels seem to have been 
written by sincerely devout Christians, of large credulity 
and little spiritual discernment, who thought to do honor 
to Christ by ascribing to him marvellous acts of whatever 
kind, frivolous, useless, or mischievous, equally with those 
worthy of " a Teacher sent from God." 

Note D. — Page 35. 

The chapter of Eusebius with reference to Papias is so 
admirable a specimen of candid and cautious criticism, as 
to deserve to be quoted in part, in order to correct the 



262 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

common impression that the early Christian writers exer- 
cised no discrimination as to the testimony offered them 
in behalf of what they wanted to believe. 

" There are said to be five Books of Papias, which bear 
the title ' Interpretation of our Lord's Declarations.' Ire- 
naeus makes mention of them as the only works written 
by him, in the following terms : ' These things are attested 
by Papias, who was John's hearer and the associate of 
Polycarp, an ancient writer. They are spoken of in his 
fourth Book, for he has written a work in five Books.' 
But Papias himself, in the preface to his discourses, by no 
means asserts that he was a hearer and an eye-witness of 
the holy apostles, but informs us that he received the doc- 
trines of faith from their intimate friends, which he states 
as follows : ' I shall not regret to subjoin to my interpreta- 
tions, for your benefit, whatever I have at any time accu- 
rately ascertained and treasured up in my memory, as I 
received it from the elders, and have recorded it in order 
to give additional confirmation to the truth by my testi- 
mony. For I have never, like many, delighted to hear 
those that tell many things, but those that teach the truth ; 
neither those that record precepts from other sources, but 
those who report precepts that are given by the Lord for 
our faith, and that came from the Truth itself. But if I 
met with any one who had been a follower of the elders 
anywhere, I made it a point to inquire what were the 
declarations of the elders ; what was said by Andrew, 
Peter, or Philip ; what by Thomas, James, John, Mat- 
thew, or any other of the disciples [z>., apostles] of our 
Lord ; what was said by Aristion, and the presbyter John, 
disciples of the Lord, — for I do not think that I derived 
so much benefit from books as from the living voice of 
those that were still surviving.' 



TESTIMONY OF PA PI AS. 263 

" Here it is proper to observe that the name of John is 
twice mentioned. He' first mentions John with Peter, 
James, and Matthew, and the other apostles, evidently 
meaning the evangelist. Again he ranks the other John 
with those not included in the number of apostles, placing 
Aristion before him. This man he distinguishes plainly 
by the name of presbyter. Thus it is here proved that the 
statement of those is true who assert that there were two 
of the same name in Asia, and that there were also two 
tombs at Ephesus, both of which bear the name of John 
even to this day, — which it is particularly necessary to 
observe ; for it is probable that the second John — if it be 
not allowed that it was the first — saw the Revelation 
(/.<?., wrote the Apocalypse) ascribed to John. The same 
Papias, of whom we now speak, professes to have received 
the declarations of the apostles from those that were in 
company with them, and says also that he was a hearer of 
Aristion and the presbyter John ; for, as he has often men- 
tioned them by name, he also gives their statement in his 
books. . . . 

" He also gives other accounts which he adds as re- 
ceived by him from unwritten tradition, likewise certain 
strange parables of our Lord, and statements of his doc- 
trine, and some other matters rather too fabulous. In these 
he says that there will be a certain millennium after the 
resurrection, and that there will be a corporeal reign of 
Christ on this very earth, which things he appears to have 
imagined as if they were authorized by the apostolic nar- 
ratives, not understanding correctly what they propounded 
obscurely in their representations. For he was very limited 
in his comprehension, as is evident from his discourses ; 
yet he was the cause why most of the writers of the Church, 
relying on his having lived at so early a time, were carried 



264 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

away by a similar opinion ; as, for instance, Irenaeus, and 
others that adopted such sentiments. . . . 

"We shall now subjoin to the extracts already given 
a tradition concerning Mark, who wrote the Gospel, in 
the following words : ^ John the presbyter also said this : 
Mark being the interpreter of Peter, whatsoever he 
recorded he wrote with great accuracy, but not, however, 
in the order in wdiich it was spoken or done by our Lord ; 
for he neither heard nor followed our Lord, but, as before 
said, he was the companion of Peter, who gave him such 
instruction as was necessary, but not a full account of our 
Lord's discourses. Wherefore Mark has not erred in any 
thing, by writing things as he has recorded them ; for he 
was careful not to omit anything that he heard, or to state 
anything falsely.' Such is the account of Papias respect- 
ing Mark. Of Matthew he has stated as follows : ' Mat- 
thew wrote his history in the Hebrew dialect {i.e., the 
Syro-Chaldaic), and every one translated it as he was 
able.' " — EusEBius, Ecclesiastical History, iii. 39. 

It is very probable that Matthew's Gospel — designed 
for Jewish readers — was originally written in the then 
vernacular language of Palestine, and that Papias had 
never seen a translation of it ; yet there is strong internal 
evidence that our present Greek Gospel of Matthew — 
if a translation — is nearly as old as the original; while 
abundant testimony^ both direct and indirect, points to it 
as undoubtedly the oldest book in the canon of the New 
Testament. 

Note E. — Page d'^. 

One of Justin's works is a Dialogue with Trypho, a 
Jew, — an imaginary personage, who, however, is sup- 
posed to maintain, after the fashion of his own time, the 



JEWISH OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. 265 

Jewish side in the controversy with Christianity. In this, 
though the Jewish interlocutor does not make the charge, 
his opponent refers to the hypothesis of magic as the com- 
mon Jewish mode of accounting for the miracles of Christ. 

The Babylonian Talmud says that Jesus was condemned 
to death " because he dealt in sorceries, and persuaded 
and seduced Israel." In another passage it is said that 
the son of Stada (by which name Mary is called) brought 
enchantments from Egypt in an incision in his flesh, the 
native magicians being on their guard to prevent the ex- 
portation of magic books. His miracles are also ascribed 
to magic arts learned in Egypt, in a Jewish work of the 
twelfth century, which consists in great part of a running 
commentary on the Gospel history from the Hebrew point 
of view ; and also in a similar work of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. 

In a Jewish Life of Jesus, extant a century or two 
earlier, and regarded with high favor by the mediaeval 
Jews, it is mentioned as the common belief that Jesus, 
entering the temple clandestinely, stole the stone on which 
was engraven the ineffable name of God, copied the name 
on parchment, and concealed the parchment in a hole cut 
by himself in his own flesh, and immediately healed by 
the might of that name. The author of the Life dissents 
from this theory, saying that without magic and incanta- 
tion he could not have obtained entrance to the holy place 
where the sacred name was kept, whence it is manifest 
that all that he did was performed by the spell of an 
impure name and by magic art. (See Wagenseil's " Tela 
Ignea Satanae.") 



266 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE, 

Note F. — Page 72. 

John vii. 53-viii. 11 is wanting in the four oldest 
manuscripts extant, — the Sinaitic, the Alexandrine, the 
Vatican, and the Parisian {Codex Ephraemi), and indeed 
in all the manuscripts of an earlier date than the eighth 
century, except the Cambridge, which, though in some 
respects of high authority, shows evident tokens of a 
transcriber who understood his work but imperfectly. It 
is either wanting, or inserted in the margin, in all manu- 
scripts of the earlier versions that can claim high antiquity 
or authority. No reference is made to it either by Origen 
or by Chrysostom, both of whom cover by their quota- 
tions almost the entire Gospels. Ambrose speaks of it as 
undoubtedly spurious. In many of the manuscripts in 
which it occurs, when not inserted in the margin, it is 
marked with an asterisk or an obelisk. In some it is 
found at the end of the Gospel, and in some between chap- 
ters xxi. and xxii. of Luke's Gospel, which it resembles in 
style more than it resembles John's. 

There is in this short passage a designation of a place, 
and there is also a mode of describing certain persons, 
neither of which occurs elsewhere in the Gospel of John, 
while it frequently makes mention of that place and of 
those persons. The place is " the Mount of Olives," — 
a name belonging to a considerable tract of country in the 
environs of Jerusalem, which is often used by the synoptic 
evangelists. John never uses it, but instead of it uses the 
name of some one of the divisions of that district, as Geth- 
semane, Bethany. The persons are " the Scribes," who — 
so called by the synoptics — are nowhere else mentioned 
under that name in the fourth Gospel, though the persons 
so termed are often mentioned by John under the more 



JOHN VIL ^Z-VIII- II. 267 

general designation of " the Jews," which with him denotes 
the captious or hostite^art of them. He wrote his Gospel 
at Ephesus, where the term yQa^iiiaxsug {scribe) bore an 
entirely different meaning. 

The context of this passage also plainly shows that it 
does not belong where it is found. If we omit it, we have 
a connected narrative of a series of conversations held by 
our Saviour, on the same day, in the same place, with the 
same persons, and in the same tone on his part and on 
theirs. If we insert it, we have to suppose that those who 
were disputing with him went home, that he spent the night 
somewhere on the Mount of Olives, that the guilty woman 
was brought to him in the temple on the following morn 
ing, that her conscience-stricken accusers left him alone 
with her, that on his dismissing her a company identical 
with that of the preceding day gathered about him, and 
that he and they resumed the discussion suspended on the 
previous day. Moreover, the transition from the suspected 
passage to the next sentence is abrupt and unnatural, and 
supposes a series of intervening incidents of which we 
have not the slightest trace. The close of the doubtful 
passage leaves Jesus alone. The next verse begins, 
"Therefore {ovv, E. T. then) spake Jesus again to them." 
Wherefore ? to whom ? why " again," if not with refer- 
ence to a preceding conversation ? The sentence thus 
beginning obviously has no connection with the suspected 
passage ; it as obviously implies a connection with some- 
thing preceding ; and, unless we omit this passage, it is 
impossible to define the circumstances that led to the 
ensuing conversation. But if we omit this passage, vii. 
52 and viii. 12 run together by a perfectly natural and easy 
connection, as successive sentences in a continuous nar- 
rative. 



268 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Note G. — Page 102. 

" It must be borne in mind that there exists in the Bible 
an element foreign to the Aryan races, to be found neither 
in the books of Zoroaster, nor in Brahmanism, nor in the 
Veda, namely, the personality of God. Although the prob- 
lem of the Divine nature does not present itself as entirely 
solved in the Vedic hymns, yet many of them tend strongly 
to pantheism. A little later, pantheism was established in 
India as a fundamental theory, together with Brahmanism, 
and it has never ceased to be the religious doctrine of the 
Hindoos. It is known that in Persia the highest divine 
person is Ormuzd, who was the Asura of the primitive age, 
and in the celestial hierarchy of Zoroaster was the first of 
the Amschaspands ; but above this personal and living 
God, supreme agent of the creation and governor of the 
world, the magi, as well as the brahmins, conceived of 
the absolute and eternal being, in whose unity all living 
beings, and Ormuzd himself, are merged. There is, then, 
no essential difference between the metaphysic of the 
Persians and that of the Hindoos. 

"The scholars of our day who have occupied them- 
selves on the Semitic faces, and among them M. Renan, 
who is an authority in these matters, have shown that 
Semitism, on the contrary, rests on the Divine personality, 
and in this respect diverges from the Aryan dogmas. We 
must recognize in this conception of God an element 
introduced into the doctrine of God by that race. It is 
recognized in the Bible from its very first words, and it 
served as a support for the entire political system of the 
people of Israel. If the prophets had not yielded to its 
influence, and had preserved in its integrity the doctrine 
of the Aryans, it is probable that they would have had 



ARYAN AND SEMITIC THEOIOGY. 269 

only a very limited hold on the Jewish people, the Semitic 
majority of which would have had no comprehension of a 
metaphysic so high. The cerebral and intellectual devel- 
opment of the Semitic race is arrested before the age at 
which man is able to understand these transcendental 
speculations. The Aryan alone can attain to them ; the 
history of religions and that of philosophies show us that 
he alone has risen high enough. What the young Idumaean 
cannot comprehend he will not teach to his sons ; the 
inaptness of the race will be perpetuated by natural 
descent ; and their God, however separate from the \vorld, 
will always have the characteristics of a great man, of a 
mighty prince, of a king of the desert. . . . 

" As to the fundamental doctrine, one can hardly be 
mistaken in admitting that it tends to return to its absolute 
\i.e. pantheistic] form, and that, in spite of all the modi- 
fications which transient causes may impose upon it, it per- 
sists, like the race that hrst conceived it, in its transparency 
and spontaneity. Thence comes it that when we, Aryans, 
give ourselves the pains to make a comparative study of 
the Koran, the Bible, and the Veda, we reject the first as 
the work of a race inferior to ours ; the second astonishes 
at the outset, yet without having much attraction for us, 
as we perceive that the men concerned in it were not of 
the same race with ourselves and did not think as we do ; 
in the third, all modern science recognizes its own verita- 
ble ancestr}'-. It is thence, consequently, that the light 
was born, and, in spite of refracting media, has been trans- 
mitted even to us. Some of these media have let the ray 
pass scarcely bent ; others have broken it, decomposed it, 
discolored it ; there are those which have almost quenched 
it, and which have remained opaque. It is to science that it 
belongs to survey the routes which the religious idea, that 



270 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

took its departure from central Asia, has followed over the 
world, and to determine the causes which in every country 
have more or less essentially modified it. It is for science 
to reconstruct the primitive idea of the doctrine, and to 
enunciate the laws that have governed its transmission." 
— Emile Burnouf, La Science des Religions^ Ch. XI. 

These extracts indicate the views professed by a large 
school of continental savants, of which Burnouf is a fair 
representative. They regard belief in the divine person- 
ality as the birth of an inferior order of intellectual de- 
velopment, and maintain that it will yield place to panthe- 
ism with the growing ascendency of the Aryan races. 

Note H. — Page 123. 

Cicero in his De Officiis (III. 32) quotes Polybius, who 
was regarded as of the highest authority in his history of this 
war, as telling the story of one perjured soldier sent back 
to Hannibal in chains ; and cites Acilius, another historian 
of approved credit, as telling a similar story of several 
captives, who were suffered to remain at Rome, but were 
degraded from citizenship. In an earlier part of the De 
Officiis (I, 13) Cicero without quoting any authority, says 
that ten were sent back to Rome, and staid there in degra- 
dation ; and that one of those ten unsuccessfully claimed 
immunity for his violated oath by a " constructive return." 
This confusion of accounts as to the details of a well- 
known passage of history is to be ascribed to the fact 
that it was so well known, and that so intense stress was 
laid in the popular speech and memory on the central 
incident of a shameless and till then unprecedented per- 
jury. 



CONTRO VERSY ABOUT EASTER. 2 7 1 

Note I. — Page 131. 

"When I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealius, and 
a thousand horsemen, to a certain vilLige called Thecoa, 
in order to know whether it were a place for a camp, as 
I came back I saw many captives crucified, and I recog- 
nized three of them as among my former acquaintance. I 
was very much grieved at this, and went in tears to Titus, 
and told him of them. He immediately ordered that they 
should be taken down, and that every thing possible should 
be done for their recovery ; yet two of them died under the 
physician's hands, while the third recovered." — Life of 
Josephus^ § 75. 

Note J. — Page 135. 

The churches of Asia Minor seem to have celebrated 
the crucifixion and the resurrection on their reputed anni- 
versaries, on whatever days of the week they might occur, 
and they appealed for this usage to the authority of the 
apostle John. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, alleged that 
he had himself thus observed the sacred season with the 
apostle John. Anicetus, Bishop of Rome, also claimed 
apostolic authority for dissent from this practice. Both may 
have been in the right ; for it is by no means improbable 
that in a matter in itself unessential a diversity of practice 
might have grown up under the auspices of different mem- 
bers of the apostolic college. The controversy, which was 
sometimes waged with no little acrimony in the primitive 
Church, is of importance only as establishing the antiquity 
of the celebration, and thus confirming the authenticity of 
the resurrection, no less than that of the crucifixion which 
no one doubts. (See Neander's " Church History," vol. i., 
section 3.) 



272 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 



Note K. — Page 156. 

"The future world has been placed by the wisdom of 
God, just in that light in which it is most for our benefit 
that it should be placed. Were we fixed in the situation 
of the apostle John, were the heavenly state continually 
laid open to our view, religion would be no longer a volun- 
tary service ; we should be forced to attend to objects so 
transcendently glorious brought thus near to us. Could 
we distinctly hear the voices, like mighty thunderings, 
heard within the vail, they would render us deaf to every 
earthly sound : religion would be no longer matter of 
choice ; and consequently faith would be no longer matter 
of virtue. The preference of present to future interests, 
and therefore the exercise of self-denial, would be impos- 
sible. But the Divine Being has been pleased to throw 
over the heavenly world a great degree of obscurity. Jesus 
Christ has, indeed, brought life and immortality to light by 
the Gospel ; has raised our hopes to the highest point, by 
investing the future state of glory with unspeakable eleva- 
tion and grandeur, but has not explicitly taught in what 
that state will consist. ' It doth not yet appear what we 
shall be.' We know enough of futurity to make it become 
the great object of our attention ; although it does not so 
press upon our organs as to render us insensible to pres- 
ent scenes and interests." — Robert Hall, Works (Greg- 
ory's edition), vol. iii. p. 326. 

" In a divine revelation, we must expect many points of 
information to be reserved. You send a child, for instance, 
on an errand to a distant street; and you give him the 
street's name, and the number of the crossings, and repeat 
to him perhaps more than once his particular business ; 



THE SILENCE OF REVELATION: 273 

but you do not detam_j,nd perplex him by either a history 
or a panoramic exhibition of the city he visits. ' When I 
was a child, I spake as a child ; ' and the converse is also 
true : ' When I was a child, I was spoken to as a child : 
such knowledge was given to me as was proper for my 
childhood's estate.' And even in our manhood, and with 
reference to our fellow-men, there are always topics as to 
which we are more or less ignorant, and as to which specu- 
lative information is withheld. Thus a government sends 
forth a colonist ; but gives him just information enough to 
enable him to perform his particular work. A general 
charges an inferior officer with a special duty ; but here, 
too, there is silence as to whatever does not belong to this 
duty. To enlarge the official directions given in either 
case, so as to include all the knowledge the superior may 
possess, would perplex the agent, and withdraw his atten- 
tion from that which concerned his work to that which did 
not concern it. And if we are to expect such silence in a 
parent's dealings with a child, and in a government's deal- 
ings with a subaltern, how much more reason have we to 
expect it in the dealings of God with man ! God knows 
all things and endures from eternity to eternity ; man 
comes into the world knowing nothing ; lives at the best a 
life which endures for a few years ; and in this short life 
is charged with the momentous question of settling his 
own destiny for the eternity to come. Silence, then, on 
all irrelevant questions is what we would expect in the 
revelation of an all-wise God ; and of the irrelevancy. He is 
the sole judge." — Rev. Francis Wharton, D.D., LL.D., 
The Sileiice of Scri^ture^ chap. i. 



274 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 



Note L. — Page 162. 
"Valor, or active courage, is for the most part consti- 
tutional, and therefore can have no more claim to moral 
merit than wit, beauty, health, strength, or any other 
endowment of the mind or body ; and so far is it from 
producing any salutary effects by introducing peace, order, 
or happiness into society, that it is the usual perpetrator 
of all the violences which from retaliated injuries distract 
the world with bloodshed and devastation. It is the en- 
gine by which the strong are enabled to plunder the weak, 
the proud to trample upon the humble, and the guilty to 
oppress the innocent ', it is the chief instrument which 
ambition employs in her unjust pursuits of wealth and 
power, and is therefore so much extolled by her votaries. 
It was, indeed, congenial with the religion of pagans, whose 
gods were, for the most part, made out of deceased heroes, 
exalted to heaven as a reward for the mischiefs which they 
had perpetrated upon earth, and therefore with them this 
was the first of virtues, and had even engrossed that 
denomination to itself ; but whatever merit it may have 
assumed among pagans, with Christians it can pretend to 
none, and few or none are the occasions in which they are 
permitted to exert it. They are so far from being allowed 
to inflict evil, that they are forbid even to resist it ; they 
are so far from being encouraged to revenge injuries, that 
one of their first duties is to forgive them ; so far from 
being incited to destroy their enemies, that they are com- 
manded to love them, and to serve them to tlie utmost of 
their power. If Christian nations therefore were nations 
of Christians, all war would be impossible and unknown 
amongst them, and valor could be neither of use or esti- 



CHRIS TIAN VIE W OF PA TRIO TISM. 275 

mation, and therefore^ould never have a place in the cata- 
logue of Christian virtues, being irreconcilable with all its 
precepts. I object not to the praise and honors bestowed 
on the valiant, — they are the least tribute which can be paid 
them by those who enjoy safety and affluence by the inter- 
vention of their dangers and sufferings, — and assert only, 
that active courage can never be a Christian virtue, be- 
cause a Christian can have nothing to do with it. Passive 
courage is indeed frequently and properly inculcated by 
this meek and suffering religion, under the titles of patience 
and resignation : a real and substantial virtue this, and a 
direct contrast to the former ; for passive courage arises 
from the noblest dispositions of the human mind, from a 
contempt of misfortunes, pain, and death, and a confidence 
in the protection of the Almighty ; active, from the mean- 
est, — from passion, vanity, and self-dependence: passive 
courage is derived from a zeal for truth, and a persever- 
ance in duty ; active is the offspring of pride and revenge, 
and the parent of cruelty and injustice : in short, passive 
courage is the consolation of a philosopher ; active, the 
ferocity of a savage. Nor is this more incompatible with 
the precepts, than with the object of this religion, which 
is the attainment of the kingdom of heaven ; for valor is 
not that sort of violence by which that kingdom is to be 
taken ; nor are the turbulent spirits of heroes and con- 
querors admissible into those regions of peace, subordina- 
tion, and tranquillity. 

" Patriotism, also, that celebrated virtue, so much prac- 
tised in ancient, and so much professed in modern times, 
that virtue, which so long preserved the liberties of Greece, 
and exalted Rome to the empire of the world, — this cele- 
brated virtue, I say, must also be excluded ; because it 
not only falls short of, but directly counteracts, the exten- 



276 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

sive benevolence of this religion. A Christian is of no 
country ; he is a citizen of the world ; and his neigh- 
bors and countrymen are the inhabitants of the remotest 
regions, whenever their distresses demand his friendly 
assistance. Christianity enjoins us to imitate the universal 
benevolence of our Creator, who pours forth his blessings 
on every nation upon earth ; patriotism, to copy the mean 
partiality of an English parish officer, who thinks injustice 
and cruelty meritorious, whenever they promote the inter- 
ests of his own inconsiderable village. This has ever 
been a favorite virtue with mankind, because it conceals 
self-interest under the mask of public spirit, not only from 
others, but even from themselves, and gives a license to 
inflict wrongs and injuries, not only with impunity, but 
with applause ; but it is so diametrically opposite to the 
great characteristic of this institution, that it never could 
have been admitted into the list of Christian virtues. 

" Friendship, likewise, although more congenial to the 
principles of Christianity, arising from more tender and 
amiable dispositions, could never gain admittance amongst 
her benevolent precepts for the same reason ; because it 
is so narrow and confined, and appropriates that benevo- 
lence to a single object, which is here commanded to be 
extended over all. Where friendships arise from similarity 
of sentiments, and disinterested affections, they are advan- 
tageous, agreeable, and innocent, but have little preten- 
sions to merit ; for it is justly observed, ' If ye love them 
which love you, what thank have ye ? for sinners also love 
those that love them.' But if they are formed from 
alliances in parties, factions, and interests, or from a par- 
ticipation of vices, the usual parents of what are called 
friendships among mankind, they are then both mischiev- 
ous and criminal, and consequently forbidden j but in their 



DURA TION OF CHRIST S MINIS TR V. 277 

utmost purity deservejio recommendation from this relig- 
ion." — SoAME Jenyns, Internal Evidence of the Christian 
Religion. 

Note M. — Page 176. 

We have in the synoptic Gospels the record of but two 
passovers during the pubUc portion of our Saviour's life, 
the last being that made memorable by his death and 
resurrection. We have the record of but three feasts other 
than passovers ; namely, that of Tabernacles, that of the 
Dedication, and one earlier than these, not designated by 
name, at which occurred the cure of the infirm man at the 
pool of Bethesda. The fourth Gospel (vi. 4) seems to 
refer to another passover as near at hand at the time of 
the feeding of the five thousand. If this narrative holds 
in John's Gospel its true chronological place, he certainly 
describes three passovers. On the bipaschal hypothesis 
the narrative of the five thousand must belong in the order 
of time between the eleventh and twelfth chapters. To have 
placed it there would have separated two narratives which 
for aesthetic and spiritual reasons the author may have 
specially desired to present in close connection ; namely, 
the raising of Lazarus, and Christ's next meeting with 
Lazarus and his sisters at their house in Bethany, on the 
first day of the crucifixion-week. This transposition of 
the sixth chapter brings John's chronology into harmony 
with that of the synoptics ; and we then have no great feast 
that occurred during our Saviour's ministry without some 
record of him in connection with it. There seems to have 
been no unanimous tradition in the early Church as to the 
length of our Lord's ministry. Irenaeus, however, recog- 
nized three passovers ; while most of the Fathers speak 
of Christ's ministry as having embraced but one full year, 



278 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

quoting as literally applicable to it the words of the Mes- 
sianic prediction, "The acceptable year of the Lord." 
Whether they drew their chronology from the single noun 
in the prediction, or whether they quoted that noun in con- 
firmation of knowledge elsewhere acquired, it is impossible 
to say. They were entirely capable of the former. 

Note N. — Page 196. 

The flagitious facility and frequency of divorce in the 
latter days of the republic, and under the earlier emperors, 
cannot be overstated. The most virtuous men in the city 
did not regard the wanton, arbitrary repudiation of a wife 
as a stain on their virtue. Cato Uticensis, a man of incor- 
ruptible integrity, and deemed a paragon of excellence, 
did not hesitate to give his wife and the mother of his 
children in marriage to his friend Hortensius, so far as it 
appears without even asking her consent, taking her again 
as a wife when she became the rich widow of Hortensius. 
^milius Paulus divorced a wife whom he confessed to be 
blameless, without so much as giving a reason for his con- 
duct. Cicero, after a married life of thirty years or more, 
divorced the mother of his children, at best, on account of 
a quarrel about property, — according to the statement of 
his less partial biographers, in order to marry the young 
heiress, his ward, whom he shortly afterward did marry. 
The divorce to which the emperor Augustus compelled 
Livia, that she might become his wife, is even more revolt- 
ing in its circumstances than either of the above-named 
instances. " Caesar cupidine formas aufert marito, incer- 
tum nam invitam ; adeo properus, ut, ne spatio quidem 
ad enitendum dato, Penatibus suis gravidam induxerit." — 
Tacitus, AnnaL, v. i. 



PATERNAL POWER IN ROME. 279 

Cicero, in his Oration for Cluentius, relates a case, 
which must even then have indicated abnormal depravity, 
but which was fully within the legal rights of the parties 
to the transaction. The mother of his client had induced 
her own son-in-law to repudiate his but recently married 
wife that she might take her daughter's place in his house- 
hold. "Lectum ilium genialem, quem biennio ante filiae 
suae nubenti straverit, in eadem domo sibi ornari et 
sterni, expulsa atque exturbata filia, jubet." — Cicero, 
pro A. Cluentio Avito, § 5. 

The following passage from Seneca indicates the profli- 
gate extent to which the mania for divorce had diffused 
itself among the women of his time : " Pudorem rei toUit 
multitudo peccantium ; et desinet esse probri loco com- 
mune maledictum. Numquid jam ulla repudio erubescit, 
postquam illustres qusedam ac nobiles feminae, non con- 
sulum numero, sed maritorum, annos suos computant, et 
exeunt matrimonii causa, nubunt repudii ? Tamdiu illud 
timebatur, quamdiu rarum erat. Quia vero nulla sine 
divortio acta sunt, quod saepe audiebant, facere didicerunt. 
Numquid jam ullus adulterii pudor est, postquam eo ven- 
tum est, ut nulla virum habeat, nisi ut aduterum irritet ? 
Argumentum est deformitatis pudicitia." — De Beneficiis^ 
iii. 16. 

Note O. — Page 197. 

The latest -instance of the extreme exercise of the power 
of life and death by the father of which we have record 
is a case recorded by Seneca; and in this instance it 
would seem that public sentiment had already outgrown 
the law. He writes : " Within our memory the people in 
the forum stabbed with their stili Erixo, a Roman knight, 
who had whipped his son to death. The authority of 



28o CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

Augustus Caesar hardly sufficed to rescue him from the 
hostile hands of fathers, no less than of sons." — De de- 
mentia, i. 14. 

We have no intimation that Erixo's act was illegal, 
nor have we proof that it would have been so at any- 
period prior to the conversion of Constantine. 

Note P. — Page 199. 

The law of divorce in the Code of Theodosius annexes 
some similar crimes to those specified in Constantine's 
edict of 331. The following are its provisions as regards 
the wife's and the husband's right to divorce. 

" Si maritum suum adulterum, aut parricidam, aut venefi- 
cum, vel certe contra nostrum imperium molientem, vel 
falsitatis crimine condemnatum invenerit, si sepulchrorum 
dissolutorem, si sacris sedibus aliquid subtrahentem, si 
latronem, vel latronum susceptorem, vel abactorem, aut 
plagiarium, vel ad contemptum sui domusve suae ipsa inspi- 
ciente cum impudicis mulieribus (quod maxime etiam castas 
exasperat) ccetum ineuntem, si suae vitae veneno, aut gladio, 
aut alio simili modo insidiantem, in se verberibus (quae in- 
genuis aliena sunt) afficientem probaverit, tunc repudii aux- 
ilio uti necessario permittimus libertatem, et causa dissidii, 
legibus comprobare." 

" Vir quoque pari fine clauditur, nee licebit ei sine causis 
apertius designatis propriam repudiare jugalem ; nee ullo 
modo expellat nisi adulteram, vel veneficam, aut homi- 
cidam, aut plagiariam, aut sepulchrorum dissolutricem, aut 
ex sacris aedibus aliquid subtrahentem, aut latronum fau- 
tricem, aut extraneorum virorum. se ignorante vel nolente, 
convivia appetentem ; aut ipso invito sine justa et proba- 
bili causa foris scilicet pernoctantem, vel circensibus, vel 



INFANTICIDE IN ROME. 28 1 

theatralibus, ludis, vel arenarum spectaculis in ipsis locis, 
in qui bus hcec adsolentrcelebrari, se prohibente, gaudentem, 
vel sibi veneno, vel gladio, aut alio simili modo insidiatri- 
cem, vel contra nostrum imperium aliquid machinantibus 
consciam, seu falsitatis se crimini immiscentem, invenerit, 
aut manus audaces sibi probaverit ingerentem, — tunc enim 
necessario ei discedendi permittimus facultatem, et causas 
dissidii legibus comprobare." 

The Church from the very first adhered to the stricter 
evangelic law of divorce, which, with the growing ascend- 
ency of the Church, prevailed in the legislation of the 
empire, as it did in the codes of all Christian nations till 
a comparatively recent period. 

Note Q. — Page 199. 

The first law annulling the power of the father over the 
child's life is an edict of Constantine (a.d. 318), which 
subjects the father who kills his child to the normal pun- 
ishment of the parricide ; namely, being sewed up in a 
bag with a cock, an ape, and a viper, and thrown into the 
sea, or the nearest river. 

With regard to infanticide, we have from Lactantius 
ample proof that the practice prevailed without reproach 
or shame until the beginning of the fourth century. In 
A.D. 315 we find an edict of Constantine recognizing 
the practice as prevalent. " Let all the cities of Italy 
take note of this law, which is designed to turn aside the 
hands of fathers from child-murder, and to inspire them 
with a better mind. If any father has children whom he 
is too poor to feed and clothe, let food and clothing be 
furnished without delay from our treasury and our domain ; 
for aid to be given to nevv-born children does not admit of 



282 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 

delay." [This, we believe, was the earliest poor-law in the 
Roman empire.] Theodosius subsequently made the ex- 
posure of children a capital crime. 

In addition to the quasi-castrense peculium^ which under 
Constantine was made to include the income of various 
offices, Constantine sanctioned by his imperial edict the 
peculium advejititium, which embraced whatever came to 
the son from his mother, whether by will or by inheritance. 
Subsequent Christian emperors enlarged this peculium^ so 
as to include whatever might come by bequest, succession, 
or gift from the child's maternal kindred, as also gifts from 
the wife to the husband or from the husband to the wife ; 
and Justinian, finally, extended it to whatever came to the 
child from any source other than the father himself. 

Note R. — Page 204. 

The following is the edict of Constantine (a.d. 312) 
referred to in the text : " Nee immoderate jure suo utatur 
[dominus] : sed tunc reus homicidii sit, si voluntate eum 
[servum] ictu fustis aut lapidis caeciderit ; vel certe telo 
usus, lethale vulnus inflixerit, aut suspendi laqueo praecep- 
erit, vel jussione tetra praecipitandum esse mandaverit, aut 
veneni virus infuderit, vel dilaniaverit poenis publicis cor- 
pus, ferarum unguibus latera persecando, vel exurendo 
oblatis ignibus membra, aut tabescentes artus atro san- 
guine permixta sanie defluentes, prope in ipsis adegerit 
cruciatibus vitam relinquere saevitia immanium Barbaro- 
rum." 



INDEX. 



Page 

Apocryphal Gospels 261 

Apostles, profession of the 244 

sacrifices and sufferings of the 235 

testimony of the 232 

writings of the 237 

Bipaschal hypothesis as to the duration of Christ's ministry. . 277 

Celsus, implied testimony of, to the genuineness of the Gospels 66 

Christ, character of, as a man 47 

character of, in the first three Gospels and in the fourth 

Gospel the same 85 

claims of, not to be traced to delusion 62 

not to fraud . 61 

ethical teachings of 54 

influence of, in human history 58 

religious doctrines of 56 

resurrection of 118 

unaccounted for except on the theory of his divine mis- 
sion 59 

unique as an historical personage 53 

Christianity, defined 5 

early progress of 188 

effect of, on character i66 

on domestic life 195 

on government 205 

on institutional charity 207 

on public opinion 192 

on slavery 201 

independent of Judaism 9 

influence of, as an energizing power 175 

as a resource in death 1S3 



284 INDEX. 

Page 

Christianity, influence of, as a source of consolation .... 180 

tried by experience 168 

Christians, primitive, qualified to judge of evidence .... 33 
Cicero, contradictory statements of, as to an event in the second 

Punic war 270 

Divorce, in the Roman law and practice . ....... 278 

under Christian auspices 280 

Easter, early controversy concerning 271 

Ethics, Christian, charges against 156 

not ascetic 157 

not defective 159 

Eusebius, testimony of, to the Gospels 34 

treatment of Papias by 35 

Evolution theory, consistent with Christianity 4 

Experiment, in science 165 

in Christianity 166 

Father, power of the, over the child, by the Roman law . . . 279 

Genealogies of Christ, how reconciled 78 

Gnostics, virtual testimony of the, to the Gospels 36 

Gospel, fourth, could have been written by none but John . . 83 

most remarkable book in the world 80 

relation of, to Gnosticism 90 

salient features of, accounted for 87 

Gospels, antiquity of the, proved by citations and references . 15 

by latent coincidences with 

profane history .... 21 
by linguistic structure ... 18 
by local and historical accu- 
racy 19 

authenticity of the, proved by the character of Christ . 47 

by their genuineness ... 41 
by their relations to one 

another 43 

genuineness of the, proved by testimony of the Chris- 
tian fathers 24 



INDEX. 285 

Page 

Gospels, genuineness of ihe, proved by testimony of heretics . 35 

by testimony of writers 

hostile to Christianity . 37 
by their relations to one 

another 43 

synoptic, coincidences of 74 

how accounted for . ... 75 

not copied from one another 70 

not of gradual growth 71 

witnesses to their own authenticity 46 

Government, effect of Christianity on 205 

Hall, Robert, quoted as to the silence of revelation 272 

Heiod Antipas, war of, with Aretas, confirming the Gospel nar- 
rative ... 258 

Home-life, effect of Christianity upon 195 

Infanticide, first prohibited by Constantine 281 

Infidelity, changed complexion of 94 

not a working force 179 

Inspiration, a secondary question 8 

Intuition defined 213 

evidential value of 224 

in science and Christianity 211 

objective 214 

subjective 218 

valid evidence on logical grounds 226 

Irenaeus, testimony of, to the Gospels 17 

James, epistle of 241 

Jenyns, Soame, quoted as to the place of courage, patriotism, 

and friendship in the Christian ethics 274 

Jewish theory of Christ's miracles 264 

Judas, worth of, as a witness for Christ 253 

Justin Martyr, alleged additions of, to the Gospel history . . 25S 

a witness to the authenticity of the Gospels . . 31 

Matthew, as a witness for Jesus 246 

Miracles, alleged impossibility of q6 



286 INDEX, 

Page 

Miracles, availing evidence for spiritual truth 109 

historical effect of 113 

necessary to authenticate a divine message or mes- 
senger IC7 

to demonstrate immortality 105 

to reveal the divine personality .... 102 

not a divine afterthought . . . 115 

not negatived by the plurality of worlds 116 

possible if there be a God 98 

Origen, testimony of, to the Gospels 25 

Pantheism, claimed to be the religion of the Aryan races . . . 263 

Papias, account of, by Eusebius 261 

Paul a witness to the authenticity of the Gospels 64 

to the resurrection of Christ 119 

Peter, testimony of, as affected by his character 246 

Renan, testimony of, to the local accuracy of the Gospels . . 234 

Resurrection of Christ, adapted to human needs 138 

attested by Paul 119 

effect of, on human history 123 

evidence for, stronger with the lapse of time . . 141 

not an hallucination 125 

not an imposture 129 

of what service 135 

the crown of Christ's example 136 

the universal belief of the early Christians . . . 121 

Scepticism of the heart and of the intellect discriminated . . . 250 

Science defined 3 

not at variance with Christianity 11 

Silence of Christianity cherishes devout thought 149 

essential to our spiritual culture . . . 148 
furnishes evidence of the divinity of the 

religion 144 

made necessary by the poverty of lan- 
guage ... 152 

various uses of ■ . 147 



INDEX. 287 

Page 

Simon, the Canaanite, testimony of 247 

Slavery as affected by Christianity 201 

Slaves, murder of, declared homicide by Constantino .... 282 

Socrates, death of 183 

Statute of limitations, principle of, applied to testimony con- 
cerning the Gospels 39 

Stoicism contrasted with Christianity 180 

Testimony the basis of science 12 

equally that of Christianity 13 

Thomas to be honored for his scepticism 249 

Wharton, Francis, quoted as to the silence of revelation . . . 273 



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G ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS CATALOGUE. 

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of one of the greatest revolutions in human affairs and prospects." — Christian Advo- 
cate. 

Daily Commentary 

For Faisilly Worship. By 180 Clergymen of Scotland 2.50 

David's Psalms in Metre. 



12nao, cloth $1.25 

„ gilt . . . 1.50 
,, *Turkey morocco . 4.50 

18mo, cloth 60 

With Brown's Notes . . .75 



IBmo, cloth, gilt . . . $0.75 

48mo, cloth .... .30 

„ ,, gilt ... .40 

„ Sheep 40 



Davies% Samuel, 

Se;;:«ons. 3 vols 3.75 

" I most sincerely wish that young ministers more especially would peruse these 
volumes with the deepest attention and seriousness, and endeavor to form their dis- 
oourses according to the model of our author." — Rev. Tlwmas Gibbons. 

Dick, Thomas, D.D. 

Lectures on Theology. Complete in 1 volume. Svo 3.00 

" We recommend this work in the very strongest terois to the Biblical student. 
It is, as a whole, superior to any other system of theology in our language. As an 
elementary book, especially fitted for those who are commencing the study of divinity, 
It is unrivalled." — Christian Journal. 

Lectures on the Acts 2.25 

*Doddridge, Rev. Philip. 

Family Expositor on the New Testament. Eoyal Svo. Sheep . 

Drummond, Rev. D. T. K. 

On the Parables. New edition. Large 12nio 1.75 

*Dublin Tracts. 

Per packet 1.00 

Duchess of Gordon, 

Memoik of 1.25 

Duncan, Rev. Henry. 

Phux)SOphy of the Seasons. 2 vols 3.00 



KOBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS* CATALOGUE. 



Duncan, Mrs. M. G. L. 

AIkmoiu ok I\Iaky L. Duncan $1.00 

Mk.mdik of Geokge a. Ltwa^iE 75 

Waki>o Dkkam .35 

Duncan, Mary B. M. 

BiiiLK Houus 1.25 

East, Rev. John. 

My Saviour 75 

*Edwards, Jonathan. 

WouKs. In 4 volumes, with Valuable Additions, and a copious General 

Index. Bevelled boards 12.00 

*' I consider Jonathan Edwards the greatest of the sons of men. He ranks with 
the brightest luminaries of the Christian Church, not excluding any country, or any 
age since the apostolic." — Robert Hali. 

"That great master-mind, Jonathan Edwards, whose close-sighted observation, 
clear judgment, and unbending faithfulness were of the very highest order." — Dr. 
Fye Smith. 

" Jonathan Edwards is a writer of great originality and piety, and with extraordi- 
nary mental powers. lie, in fact, commenced a new and higher school in divinity, to 
which the great body of evangelical authors who have since lived have been indebted." 
Rev. E. Bickersteth. 

*' To theological students his works are almost indispensable. In all the branches 
of theology, — didactic, polemical, casuistic, experimental, and practical, — he had fevr 
equals, and perhaps no superior." — Orw?e. 

" Since the days of Calvin, the world has seen no greater theologian than Jona- 
than Edwards." — Atnerican Preshyterian. 

On the Will. Separate 1.50 

English Pulpit. 

A Series of Sermons 2.25 

Erskine, Rev. Ralph. 

Gospel Sonnets 75 

Evidences of Christianity. 

Lectures beibre the University of Virginia 3.00 

Fairbairn, Patrick, D.D. 

*TnE Revelation of Law in Sckiptukk, considered with respect both 

to its own Nature, and its relative Place in Successive Dispensations 2.50 

" Able and scholarly, and well calculated to correct the false notions regarding law 
In the divine administration." — United Presbyterian. 

"The Evangelical student will find here a rich and strengthening feast, and will 
rise from it with increased confidence in the eternal verities of the gospel." — Nut 
jia/itist. , 

Family Worship. 

A Series of Prayers for Morning and Evening throughout the Year. By 

180 Clergymen of Scotland. New Edition, at half the former price . 2.50 

"This volume is a treasure of its kind. The prayers are simple, varied, and im- 
pressive, excellent in the grasp of their subjects, and fervent in the words of supplica- 
tion." — Watchman. 



8 ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS* CATALOGUE. 

Flavel, John. 

On the Assembly's Catechism ••••••*. f0.60 

Foster, J ohn. 

Essay on Decision of Character 1.25 

,, „ PopuLAK Ignorance 1.25 

,, ,, Improvement of Time 1 25 

" As an essayist, John Foster was a bright and shining light. As difiFerent as pos- 
Bible from Addison, Steele, and Johnson, he far excels them in the importance of hia 
Bubjects, and in the originality, largeness, and vigor of his conceptions." 

Foxe, John. 

Book of Martyrs. Complete edition, royal 8vo. Illustrated. Sheep 5 00 

Fresh Leaves 

From the Book and its Story. By the author of "The Book and 

its Story." With more than 50 illustrations. 12rao 2.00 

" This is one of the books that we would be glad to see in wide circulati&n. It is 
particularly rich in its treatment of the Old Testament period, making use of the ma- 
terials of recent travels, explorations, and discoveries, and illustrating it by more than 
fifty engravings, twelve of which are full-page. The surprising confirmations of the 
sacred record by the discoveries of the last few years receive full and appropriate notice. 
The ordinary, and even the professional reader, will find here a large amount of inter- 
esting and important information. Let our young people get it." — Northern Christian 
Advocate. 

Gasparin's, Madame, 

Near and Heavenly Horizons. 12mo 1.50 

" This is a book to be enjoyed and revelled in rather than criticised. The reader 
who sits down to it will have a rare literary treat." — Scottish Guardian. 

Giberne, Agnes. 

AiaiEE. A Tale of the Days of James the Second. 16mo 1.50 

A powerful and well-written story, giving a grapliic historical picture of a very 
interesting period in English history. 

Gilflllan, George. 

Martyrs and Heroes of the Scottish Covenant l.CO 

God is Love i-25 

*Goodrich, C. A. 

BiJLtLE Geography .•..••• .50 

Gosse 

On Life in Various Forms 1.50 

1 

Gray, Thomas. 

Elegy, AND Other Poems. Cloth, plain, $1.50; cloth, gilt . . . . 2.00 

Griscom, John, Life of loo 

Guinness^ Sermons i.50 

Guthrie, William. 

Christian's Great Interest ....... 1.00 



ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS' CATALOGUE. 



Guthrie, Thomas, D.D. 

Works in 9 vols., in a box. $13.50. 

The Gospel in Ezekiel .$150 

The Saint's Inueuitance 1 60 

The Way to Life 1.50 

On the Parables. Illustrated, with a brief Memoir 1.50 

Oct of Hakness 1..50 

Speaking to THE Heakt. (Enlarged edition) 1.50 

Stumes ok Characteh 1.50 

The City and Ragged Schools. In one volume 1.50 

IVlAN AND THE GOSPEL AND OUR FATHER'S BUSINESS. lu One VOiume . 1.50 

" In the quiet, tender pathos which *^ouches some of the purest emotion.s of the heart; in 
the power to iimke the common thiaiis around us ilhistrate and enforce some of the grand 
truths of revelation : in the appreciation of deeds of generosity and heroism ; in the inculca- 
r.ation ot hii<h views of Christian life and duty ; and io the application of the precious couso* 
lutious of the Gospel, Dr. Guthrie's Works have not been surpassed in this generation." 

Haldane, Alexander. 

Memoirs of R. and J. A. Haldanb ... 2.5U 

Haldane, Robert, 

On Romans 3.00 

Of this work the Edinburgh "Presbyterian Review "says: "In ingenuity, it is 
equal to Turretine ; in theological accuracy, superior. It is at least as judicious as 
Scott, and more terse, pointed, and discursive. The only Commentary on the Romans 
that we have read that it does not excel is that of Calvin. Calvin and Haldane stand 
alone, the possessors, as expounders of this Epistle, of nearly equal honors." 

Hall, Newman, D.D. 

Follow Jesus 35 

Quench not the Spirix 35 

Now 35 

Hamilton, James, D.D. 

The Royal Preacher 125 

Lessons froji the Great Biography 1 25 

Life in Earnest 50 

Mount of Olives 50 

Harp on the Willows 50 

Kmklhms fkom Eden 5'? 

The Lake of Galilee .50 

Happy Home 75 

Life of Lady Colquhoun . . 1,00 

L.v.MP AM) Lantern . . ,50 

The Prodigal Son. Illustrated 3.00 

The Pearl of Parables 1 25 

Life of Riciiap.d Williams ] 00 

,, „ .Iames Wilson 1 25 

M<»SKS, THE M \N OF (JoD 150 

Life of Dr Hamilton, By Arnot 2.50 

"In Dr. Hamilton's writings there is so quick a sympathy with the beautiful in 
nature and art, so inexhaustible a fertility of illustration from all departments of 
tncwlodge, so pictorial a vividness of language, that his pages move before us like soma 
giuioring summer landscape glowiug in the light of a gorgeous sunset." — Obierver, 



10 ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS* CATALOGUE. 

Hammond, Captain 

Life of. 12mo $1.25 

Hanna, Rev. William, D.D. 

The Life of Our Lokd. 3 vols. 12mo 4.50 

" There is no parade of learning, no distracting foot-notes, no allusions for the 
eruiite alone. It is an unincumbered, unartificial work. We are presented with the 
products, and not with the processes, of reasoning ; with the results of scholarship, 
without the display of the critical knowledge on which they are based. 

" From a perusal of these volumes we believe that the sympathetic reader will 
carry away a more distinct image of the character and life of Christ and his relations 
to his contemporaries, than he can gain from the more brilliant page of Pressense, or 
the more elaborate discussions of Neander." — North British Review. 

The Wars of the Huguekots. 12mo 1.25 

Hart, John S. 

Removing Mountains 1.25 

Haste to the Rescue . . . .' 75 

Havelock, General Sir Henry, 

Life of 75 

Hawes, Rev. Erskine, 

Life of 1.00 

Helena's Household* 

A Tale of Rome in the First Century. 12mo 2.00 

"The gladiaforial scenes in the amphitheatre, the burning of Rome, life in the 
catacombs, &c., are all depicted with a graphic pen in this powerful story." 

Henry, Matthew. 

*An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments. 5 vols, quarto. 

Sheep 25.(K) 

*' For aome particular purposes, and in some particular respects, other commentaries 
may be preferable; but, taking it as a whole, and as adapted to every class of readers, 
this Commentary may be said to combine more excellencies than any work of the kind 
which was ever written in any language." — Rev. Dr. Alexander. 

" It is the best Commentary by far from any one hand in the English language, 
an 1 we may say the best in the world." — Independent. 

" It has never been surpassed." — Evangelist. 

Communicant's Companion ... 60 

Hervey, Rev. James. 

Meditations. 12mo .1.50 

„ 18mo 60 

Hetherington, W. M., D.D. 

Church of Scotland ... 2-50 

History of the Westminster Assembly 1 25 

" It contains the history of one of the most interesting portions of the Christian 
Church, and is distinguished, as well by its neat and graceful style, as by the fulness, 
perspicuity, and the fidelity of its statements." 






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